any harm.’  The boy who had become a girl, obeyed.  Master Nicholas entered the room and found in it a young maid whom he did not know, and his wife in bed.  ‘Big booby,’ said the latter to him, ’don’t stand gaping at what you see, just as I had come to bed because had a stomach ache, I received a visit from Catherine, the daughter of my sister Jeanne de Palaiseau, with whom we quarrelled fifteen years ago.  Kiss your niece.  She is well worth the trouble.’  The jeweller gave Violle a hug, and from that moment wanted nothing so much as to be alone with her a moment, so that he might embrace her as much as he liked.  For this reason he led her without any delay down to the kitchen, under the pretext of giving her some walnuts and wine, and he was no sooner there with her than he began to caress her very affectionately.  He would not have stopped at that if St. Orberosia had not inspired his good wife with the idea of seeing what he was about.  She found him with the pretended niece sitting on his knee.  She called him a debauched creature, boxed his ears, and forced him to beg her pardon.  The next day Violle resumed his previous form.”

Having heard this story the venerable Canon Monnoyer thanked Pierre Mille for having told it, and, taking up his pen, began to write out a list of horses that would win at the next race meeting.  For he was a book-maker’s clerk.

In the mean time Penguinia gloried in its wealth.  Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough.  “But these,” as a member of the Institute said, “are necessary economic fatalities.”  The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts.  The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury.  Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character.  An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it.  The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity.  It had reached its zenith.

BOOK VIII.  FUTURE TIMES

THE ENDLESS HISTORY

Alca is becoming Americanised.—­M.  Daniset.

And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.—­Genesis xix. 25

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Poverty hast ever been familiar to Greece, but virtue has been acquired, having been accomplished by wisdom and firm laws.—­Henry Cary’s Translation.

You have not seen angels then.—­Liber Terribilis.

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We are now beginning to study a chemistry which will deal with effects produced by bodies containing a quantity of concentrated energy the like of which we have not yet had at our disposal.—­Sir William Ramsay.