By Victor Hugo.
Chapter I. Gaillard was a wrecker, a smuggler. He was an honest man. Ships are the effect and cause of commerce. Commerce cheats, commerce adulterates, commerce is bad. To wreck ships engaged in knavery is good. Gaillard the smuggler robbed the revenue, you say; so do monarchs. You take off your hat to a king. I raise mine to Gaillard—to a man. You call me crazy. Keep your temper; I keep mine. You are an idiot. I should like to punch your head. Chapter II. Gaillard was considered ugly. He was not. He had a bump. A dromedary has a hump. The dromedary is beautiful. He had a squint—it is better to squint than to be blind. His eyes were green—that is the colour of Nature’s beauteous sylvan dress. His mouth was extremely large—so is that of the hippopotamus. The hippopotamus is a charming fellow. Gaillard had the beauty of the dromedary, the loveliness of Nature in his eyes, the charm of the hippopotamus. Gaillard was sublime. Chapter III. Gaillard sprang into the sea to bathe; this happened once a year. You will admit that once in three hundred and sixty-five days was not too often. An octopus—a devil fish—was watching him. Man and monster, they eyed each other. Gaillard trembled at its glance—he was not brave. I saw it once, and did not tremble; I am brave. It was at the Aquarium. The octopus has eight legs; Gaillard wished for eighty, but his two sufficed. Fear gave them the swiftness of two hundred. He ran. You would have run. Should I have done so? Everything is possible. It is possible I should have run.
F. P. Delafond.
The Weekly Dispatch. September 13, 1885.
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The Cat.
The cat is the concrete symbol of a vacillating politician.
It is always on the fence.
It is the feline embodiment of one of the profoundest human principles wrenched from the circumambience of the Unknown, and hurled into the bosom of consciousness.
Nine tailors make one man. The cat has nine times the life of one man, for it has nine lives. Possession, also, is nine points of the law. Behold a legal possession of existence equal to the span of eighty-one clothiers’ lives.