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VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 28S 



sequently there was no doubt as to the path to be pursued : the mother, 

 the daughter, the whole family, immediately assented with one accord, 

 and Lewis Brabant had the honour to receive then commands to prepare 

 for the nuptidlb v/ith ali speed. 



To prepare for the nuptials, however, required the assistance of a little 

 ready money ; but. Lewis Brabant was destitute of such an article. It 

 was necessary, nevertheless, to procure it ; and he now resolved to try 

 whether the san.e taleiit which had obtained for him the promise of a wife, 

 might not aiso obtain for him the material he stood in need of. 



He recollected that there Hved at Lyons an old miserly banker of the 

 name of Cornu, who had accumulated immense wealth by usury and ex- 

 tortion, and whose conscience appeared often to be ill at ease, in conse- 

 quence of the means he had made use of ; and it immediately struck him 

 that M. Cornu was the very character that might answer his purpose. 



To Lyons, therefore, he went instantly post-haste, commenced an im- 

 mediate acquaintance with M. Cornu, and on every interview took espe- 

 cial care, on enleriiig into conversation with him, to contrast the pure hap- 

 pmess enjoyed by the man whose conscience could look back, like M. 

 Cornu's, as he was pleased to say, on a life devoted to acts of charity and 

 benevolence, with the horrors of the wretch who had amassed heaps of 

 wealth by usury and injustice, and whose tormented mind only gave him 

 now a foretaste of wltat he was to expect hereafter. The miser was per- 

 petually desiroLS of changing the conversation ; but the mere he tried, the 

 more his companion pressed upon him with it ; till finding, on one occasion, 

 that he appeared more agitated than ever, the ventriloquist conceived such 

 an occasion to be the golden moment for putting his scheme into execu- 

 tion ; and ?i that instant a low, solemn, sepulchral mutter was heard, as in 

 the former case, which was at last found to be the voice of M. Cornu's 

 father, who had beeri dead for some years, and which declared him ta 

 have passed all this time in the tortures of purgatory, from which he had 

 now just learned that nothing could free him but his son's paying ten thou- 

 sand crowns into th« hands of Lewis Brabant, then with him, for the pur- 

 pose of redeeming Christian slaves from the hands of the Turks. 



All, as in the last case, was unutterable astonishment ; but Lewis Bra- 

 bant was the most astonished of the two : modestly declared that now for 

 the first time in his hfe he was convinced of the possibility of the dead 

 holding conversation with the living : and admitted that, in truth, he had 

 for many years been benevolently employed in redeeming Christian slaves 

 from the Turks, although his native bashfulness would not allow him ta 

 avow it publicly. 



The mind of the old miser was distracted with a thousand contending^ 

 passions. He was suspicious without having any satisfactory reason for sus- 

 picion ^ filial duty prompted him to rescue his father from his abode of 

 misery ; but ten thousand crowns was a large sum of money even for such 

 a purpose. He at length resolved to adjourn the meeting till the next 

 day, and to change it to another place. He required time lo examine into 

 this mysterious affair, and also wished, as he told his companion, to give 

 his father an opportunity of trying whether he could not bargain for a 

 smaller sum. 



They accordingly separated ; but renewed their meeting the next day 

 with the punctuahty of men of business. The place made choice of by M. 

 Cornu for this rencontre, was an open common in the vicinity of Lyons, 

 where there was neither a house, nor a wall, nor a tree, nor a bush, that 



