Me, I do nothing in this style there. On
the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a
modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who
implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed.
Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty
years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars,
and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouche, a Canler, a
genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city.
The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer
that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the
sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister
who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the
duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are
cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable!
My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times,
many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not
wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of
the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with
M. Lenoble._
Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her
marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the
writing of the unknown lady.
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