The Count of Monte Cristo

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distance of three hundred leagues the ideas and wishes of a man sitting
at a table at one end of the line to another man similarly placed at the
opposite extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition
on the part of the sender of the message. I began to think of genii,
sylphs, gnomes, in short, of all the ministers of the occult sciences,
until I laughed aloud at the freaks of my own imagination. Now, it never
occurred to me to wish for a nearer inspection of these large insects,
with their long black claws, for I always feared to find under their
stone wings some little human genius fagged to death with cabals,
factions, and government intrigues. But one fine day I learned that the
mover of this telegraph was only a poor wretch, hired for twelve hundred
francs a year, and employed all day, not in studying the heavens like
an astronomer, or in gazing on the water like an angler, or even in
enjoying the privilege of observing the country around him, but all his
monotonous life was passed in watching his white-bellied, black-clawed
fellow insect, four or five leagues distant from him. At length I felt
a desire to study this living chrysalis more closely, and to endeavor