"We might say that M. de Bonald has sweaty feet."
"Let us begin a series of sketches of Ministerialist orators,"
suggested Hector Merlin.
"You do that, youngster; you know them; they are your own party," said
Lousteau; "you could indulge any little private grudges of your own.
Pitch into Beugnot and Syrieys de Mayrinhac and the rest. You might
have the sketches ready in advance, and we shall have something to
fall back upon."
"How if we invented one or two cases of refusal of burial with
aggravating circumstances?" asked Hector.
"Do not follow in the tracks of the big Constitutional papers; they
have pigeon-holes full of ecclesiastical _canards_," retorted Vernou.
"_Canards_?" repeated Lucien.
"That is our word for a scrap of fiction told for true, put in to
enliven the column of morning news when it is flat. We owe the
discovery to Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the lightning
conductor and the republic. That journalist completely deceived the
Encyclopaedists by his transatlantic _canards_. Raynal gives two of them
for facts in his _Histoire philosophique des Indes_."
"I did not know that," said Vernou. "What were the stories?"
"One was a tale about an Englishman and a negress who helped him to
escape; he sold the woman for a slave after getting her with child
himself to enhance her value.
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