Dantès, Edmond (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; France -- History -- February Revolution, 1848
At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, and
a low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. The
Deputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electric
telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at
that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom!
Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine,
he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced.
"Lyons--Marseilles--Rome--Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And
while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed,
clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters
unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he
touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a
piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of
one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the
other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents,
character by character, to their distant destination.
And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, the
intelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitary
chamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in a
language which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europe
unbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasing
parturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministers
to wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as if
literally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men of
the greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy or
covetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sown
broadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation,
pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving them
knowledge of their rights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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