"That distinguished mechanic
has just completed, after my own designs, an improved mechanical
arrangement by which a child could get a thousand trusses of hay
inside his cap."
"Then good-bye till to-morrow."
"Till to-morrow, sir."
"Talk of mechanics!" cried Raphael; "isn't it the greatest of the
sciences? The other fellow with his onagers, classifications, ducks,
and species, and his phials full of bottled monstrosities, is at best
only fit for a billiard-marker in a saloon."
The next morning Raphael went off in great spirits to find Planchette,
and together they set out for the Rue de la Sante--auspicious
appellation! Arrived at Spieghalter's, the young man found himself in
a vast foundry; his eyes lighted upon a multitude of glowing and
roaring furnaces. There was a storm of sparks, a deluge of nails, an
ocean of pistons, vices, levers, valves, girders, files, and nuts; a
sea of melted metal, baulks of timber and bar-steel. Iron filings
filled your throat. There was iron in the atmosphere; the men were
covered with it; everything reeked of iron. The iron seemed to be a
living organism; it became a fluid, moved, and seemed to shape itself
intelligently after every fashion, to obey the worker's every caprice.
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