lieved from the usual condition of labour; and when, after a
long repose, they have produced a work, (how it comes to be known what
bird will lay the golden egg till the egg is laid, we are not told,)
then will a jury, assembled at the metropolis of the world, which will
be built on the site of Constantinople, vote them a recompense.
"Imagine, for example, Jacquart or Watt, Newton or Corneille, presenting
themselves before this august tribunal--Jacquart with his loom, Watt
with his steam-engine, Newton with his theory of attractions, Corneille
with his most beautiful tragedy. At the instant, to the exclusion of all
delays and hazards of fame, there would be voted to these great men a
remuneration, to be levied on all the _phalanges_. Suppose only five
francs on each _phalange_, and that there were five hundred thousand
_phalanges_ on the globe, the jury would have accorded a sum of
2,500,000 francs; Jacquart would not have been compelled to die in a
state bordering on indigence, after having enriched the universe."

Fournier was in person short, thin, and pale, but his melancholy and
pensive physiognomy bore traces of his long, unquiet, and ungrateful
labours. A simple clerk, he did not venture, when he published his
writings, to sign them with any other name than that of _Charles_,
declaring himself ready, under that name, to answer any objections that
might be addressed to him. Alas! there were few objections addressed to
him; Charles got no readers; men pitied or ridiculed him as a visionary.
Repulsed by the surrounding world, there remained nothing for him but to
live in that creation of his own, in which, at all events, he reigned
supreme. In his reveries he found his only happiness. He walked glorious
in the midst of joyful enthusiastic multitudes, who saluted him as their
benefactor, and proclaimed him as their sovereign; he spoke to these
beings, the children of his dreams, in a language which he alone
comprehended; he built his _phalanstere_, peopled, organized it;
conducted himself the labours of his harmonic groups, founded his towns,
his capitals, nay, his capital of the world, which he erected on the
Bosphorus, uniting the east and west, the north and south. There he
placed with his own hand the laurel, decreed by his million of
phalanges, on the brow of the greatest philosopher of his age. "These
festivals of the imagination," says M. Reybaud, "were the only pleasures
that relived the long, and gloomy, and