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torian, geometer, mechanician, astronomer, physician, 
chemist, or geologist, &e.. . . . . His desire, his will, is to 
speak on every thing. He requires, therefore, colleagues 
who cannot contradict him. 
If the town constructs an edifice, the Eschevin, losing 
sight of the question, talks away on the aspect of the 
facades. He declares with the imperturbable assurance 
inspired by a fact that he had heard speak of whilst on 
the knees of his nurse, that on a particular side of the 
future building, the moon, an active agent of destruction, 
will incessantly corrode the stones of the frontage, the 
shafts of the columns, and that it will efface in a few 
years all the projecting ornaments; and hence the fear of 
the moon’s voracity will lead to the upsetting of all the 
views, the studies, and the well-digested plans of several 
architects. Place a meteorologist on the council, and; 
despite the authority of the nurses, a whole scaffolding of 
gratuitous suppositions will be crumbled to dust by these 
few categorical and strict words of science; the moon 
does not exert the action that is attributed to it. 
At another time, the Eschevin hurls his anathema at 
the system of warming by steam. According to him, 
this diabolical invention is an incessant cause of damp to 
the wood-work, the furniture, the papers, and the books. 
The Eschevin fancies, in short, that in this way of warm- 
ing, torrents of watery vapour enter into the atmosphere 
of the apartments. Can he love a colleague, I ask, who 
after having had the cunning patience to let him come to 
the conclusion of his discourse, informs him that, although 
vapour, the vehicle of an enormous quantity of latent 
heat, rapidly conveys this caloric to every floor of the 
largest edifice, it has never occasion therefore to escape 
from those impermeable tubes through which the cireu- 
lation is effected ! 
