e! Adieu, thou stick of a burnt-out fire-work! Adieu, thou
machine! Although I have given thee from time to time some glimpses of
people dear to me, old family portraits,--back with you to the picture
dealer's shop, to Madame de T-----, and all the rest of them; take
your place round the bier with undertaker's mutes, for all I care!"

MEDITATION XXX.

CONCLUSION.

A recluse, who was credited with the gift of second sight, having
commanded the children of Israel to follow him to a mountain top in
order to hear the revelation of certain mysteries, saw that he was
accompanied by a crowd which took up so much room on the road that,
prophet as he was, his _amour-propre_ was vastly tickled.

But as the mountain was a considerable distance off, it happened that
at the first halt, an artisan remembered that he had to deliver a new
pair of slippers to a duke and peer, a publican fell to thinking how
he had some specie to negotiate, and off they went.

A little further on two lovers lingered under the olive trees and
forgot the discourse of the prophet; for they thought that the
promised land was the spot where they stood, and the divine word was
heard when they talked to one another.

The fat people, loaded with punches a la Sancho, had been wiping their
foreheads with their handkerchiefs, for the last quarter of an hour,
and began to grow thirsty, and therefore halted beside a clear spring.

Certain retired soldiers complained of the corns which tortured them,
and spoke of Austerlitz, and of their tight boots.

At the second halt, certain men of the world whispered together:

"But this prophet is a fool."

"Have you ever heard him?"

"I? I came from sheer curiosity."

"And I because I saw the fellow had a large following." (The last man
who spoke was a fashionable.)

"He is a mere charlatan."

The prophet kept marching on. But when he reached the plateau, from
which a wide horizon spread before him, he turned back, and saw no one
but a poor Israelite, to whom he might have said as the Prince de
Ligne to the wretched little bandy-legged drummer boy, whom he found
on the spot where he expected to see a whole garrison awaiting him:
"Well, my readers, it seems that you have dwindled down to one."

Thou man of God who has followed me so far--I hope that a short
recapitulation will not terrify thee, and I have traveled on under the
impression that thou, lik