Читать книгу The Universal Reciter - Various - Страница 17

Table of Contents

OSBORNE.

In the year 1762 a miser, of the name of Foscue, in France, having amassed enormous wealth by habits of extortion and the most sordid parsimony, was requested by the government to advance a sum of money as a loan. The miser demurred, pretending that he was poor. In order to hide his gold effectually, he dug a deep cave in his cellar, the descent to which was by a ladder, and which was entered by means of a trap-door, to which was attached a spring-lock.

He entered this cave one day to gloat over his gold, when the door fell upon him, and the spring-lock, the key to which he had left on the outside, snapped, and held him a prisoner in the cave, where he perished miserably. Some months afterwards a search was made, and his body was found in the midst of his money-bags, with a candlestick lying beside it on the floor. In the following lines the miser is supposed to have just entered his cave, and to be soliloquizing.