cian, astronomer, physician, chemist, or
geologist, &c.... His desire, his will, is to speak on every thing. He
requires, therefore, colleagues who cannot contradict him.

If the town constructs an edifice, the Eschevin, losing sight of the
question, talks away on the aspect of the facades. He declares with the
imperturbable assurance inspired by a fact that he had heard speak of
whilst on the knees of his nurse, that on a particular side of the
future building, the moon, an active agent of destruction, will
incessantly corrode the stones of the frontage, the shafts of the
columns, and that it will efface in a few years all the projecting
ornaments; and hence the fear of the moon's voracity will lead to the
upsetting of all the views, the studies, and the well-digested plans of
several architects. Place a meteorologist on the council, and, despite
the authority of the nurses, a whole scaffolding of gratuitous
suppositions will be crumbled to dust by these few categorical and
strict words of science; the moon does not exert the action that is
attributed to it.

At another time, the Eschevin hurls his anathema at the system of
warming by steam. According to him, this diabolical invention is an
incessant cause of damp to the wood-work, the furniture, the papers, and
the books. The Eschevin fancies, in short, that in this way of warming,
torrents of watery vapour enter into the atmosphere of the apartments.
Can he love a colleague, I ask, who after having had the cunning
patience to let him come to the conclusion of his discourse, informs him
that, although vapour, the vehicle of an enormous quantity of latent
heat, rapidly conveys this caloric to every floor of the largest
edifice, it has never occasion therefore to escape from those
impermeable tubes through which the circulation is effected!

Amidst the various labours that are required by every large town, the
Eschevin thinks, some one day, that he has discovered an infallible way
of revenging himself of specialties. Guided by the light of modern
geology, it has been proposed to go with an immense sounding line in
hand, to seek in the bowels of the earth the incalculable quantities of
water, that from all eternity circulate there without benefiting human
nature, to make them spout up to the surface, to distribute them in
various directions, in large cities, until then parched, to take
advantage of their high temperature, to warm economically the
magnificent conservat