Upon him all the vagaries of their
superstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed
to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her.
Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered with the
apprehension that Jean Poquelin had offered him to strange gods. The
house was the subject of every bad boy's invention who loved to contrive
ghostly lies. "As long as that house stands we shall have bad luck. Do
you not see our pease and beans dying, our cabbages and lettuce going to
seed and our gardens turning to dust, while every day you can see it
raining in the woods? The rain will never pass old Poquelin's house. He
keeps a fetich. He has conjured the whole Faubourg St. Marie. And why,
the old wretch? Simply because our playful and innocent children call
after him as he passes."
A "Building and Improvement Company," which had not yet got its charter,
"but was going to," and which had not, indeed, any tangible capital yet,
but "was going to have some," joined the "Jean-ah Poquelin" war.
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