greed to light the town,
which had much need of it, "especially at night," as Commissary
Passauf wittily said. Works for producing a lighting gas had
accordingly been established; the gasometers were ready for use,
and the main pipes, running beneath the street pavements, would
soon appear in the form of burners in the public edifices and the
private houses of certain friends of progress. Van Tricasse and
Niklausse, in their official capacity, and some other worthies,
thought they ought to allow this modern light to be introduced
into their dwellings.

If the reader has not forgotten, it was said, during the long
conversation of the counsellor and the burgomaster, that the
lighting of the town was to be achieved, not by the combustion of
common carburetted hydrogen, produced by distilling coal, but by
the use of a more modern and twenty-fold more brilliant gas,
oxyhydric gas, produced by mixing hydrogen and oxygen.

The doctor, who was an able chemist as well as an ingenious
physiologist, knew how to obtain this gas in great quantity and
of good quality, not by using manganate of soda, according to the
method of M. Tessie du Motay, but by the direct decomposition of
slightly acidulated water, by means of a battery made of new
elements, invented by himself. Thus there were no costly
materials, no platinum, no retorts, no combustibles, no delicate
machinery to produce the two gases separately. An electric
current was sent through large basins full of water, and the
liquid was decomposed into its two constituent parts, oxygen and
hydrogen. The oxygen passed off at one end; the hydrogen, of
double the volume of its late associate, at the other. As a
necessary precaution, they were collected in separate reservoirs,
for their mixture would have produced a frightful explosion if it
had become ignited. Thence the pipes were to convey them
separately to the various burners, which would be so placed as to
prevent all chance of explosion. Thus a remarkably brilliant
flame would be obtained, whose light would rival the electric
light, which, as everybody knows, is, according to Cassellmann's
experiments, equal to that of eleven hundred and seventy-one wax
candles,--not one more, nor one less.

It was certain that the town of Quiquendone would, by this
liberal contrivance, gain a splendid lighting; but Doctor Ox and
his assistant took little account of this, as will be seen in the
sequel.

The day after that on which Commiss