Things Seen (Choses Vues)

Excerpt from Things Seen <p>After the Revolution of July, the old race, of which he was the high Chamberlain, having fallen, he found him self once more on his feet, and said to the people of 1830, seated bare-armed upon a heap of paving-stones, Make me your ambassador' He received the confession of Mirabeau and the first confidence of Thiers. He said of himself that he was a great poet, and that he had composed a trilogy in three dynasties Act I., the Empire of Bonaparte Act II., the House of Bourbon Act III., the House of Orleans. <p>He did all this in his palace; and in this palace, like a spider in his web, he allured and caught in succession heroes, thinkers, great men, conquerors, kings, princes, emperors, Bonaparte, Sieyes, Madame de Stael, Chateau briand, Benjamin Constant, Alexander of Russia, William of Prussia, Francis of Austria, Louis XVIII., Louis Phi lippe, all the gilded and glittering flies who buzz through the history of the last forty years. All this glistening throng, fascinated by the penetrating eye of this man, passed in turn under that gloomy entrance bearing upon the architrave the inscription hotel talleyrand. <p>Well, the day before yesterday, May 17, 1838, this man died. Doctors came and embalmed the body. To do this they, like the Egyptians, removed the bowels from the stomach and the brain from the skull. The work done, after having transformed the Prince de Talleyrand into a mummy, and nailed down this mummy in a coffin lined with white satin, they retired, leaving upon a table the brain, that brain which had thought so many things, inspired so many men, erected so many buildings, led two revolutions, duped twenty kings, held the world. The doctors being gone, a servant entered; he saw what they had left: Hulloa! They have forgotten this. What was to be done with it? It occurred to him that there was a sewer in the street; he went there, and threw the brain into this sewer. <p>About the Publisher <p>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com <p>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.