to a noble. A splendid page of biblical genealogy
shows that in one thousand years three families, Shem, Ham, and Japhet,
peopled the globe. One family may become a nation; unfortunately, a
nation may become one family. To prove this we need only search back
through our ancestors and see their accumulation, which time increases
into a retrograde geometric progression, which multiplies of itself;
reminding us of the calculation of the wise man who, being told to
choose a reward from the king of Persia for inventing chess, asked
for one ear of wheat for the first move on the board, the reward to be
doubled for each succeeding move; when it was found that the kingdom was
not large enough to pay it. The net-work of the nobility, hemmed in by
the net-work of the bourgeoisie,--the antagonism of two protected races,
one protected by fixed institutions, the other by the active patience of
labor and the shrewdness of commerce,--produced the revolution of 1789.
The two races almost reunited are to-day face to face with collaterals
without a heritage. What are they to do? Our political future is big
with the answer.

The family of the man who under Louis XV. was simply called Minoret was
so numerous that one of the five children (the Minoret whose entrance
into the parish church caused such interest) went to Paris to seek
his fortune, and seldom returned to his native town, until he came to
receive his share of the inheritance of his grandfather. After suffering
many things, like all young men of firm will who struggle for a place in
the brilliant world of Paris, this son of the Minorets reached a nobler
destiny than he had, perhaps, dreamed of at the start. He devoted
himself, in the first instance, to medicine, a profession which demands
both talent and a cheerful nature, but the latter qualification even
more than talent. Backed by Dupont de Nemours, connected by a lucky
chance with the Abbe Morellet (whom Voltaire nicknamed Mords-les), and
protected by the Encyclopedists, Doctor Minoret attached himself as
liegeman to the famous Doctor Bordeu, the friend of Diderot, D'Alembert,
Helvetius, the Baron d'Holbach and Grimm, in whose presence he felt
himself a mere boy. These men, influenced by Bordeu's example, became
interested in Minoret, who, about the year 1777, found himself with
a very good practice among deists, encyclopedists, sensualists,
materialists, or whatever you are pleased to call the rich philosophers
of that peri