Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 28 August 1886.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 43–4).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: For RK's several exercises in Frenchified English, see the headnote to ‘The History of a Crime’. The decline in the exchange value of the rupee was a standard topic for most of RK's years in India.

Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, ii, 1081–3.

To be virtuous one must be happy.

This is a fact. More. It is a fact which can be proved.

And to be happy, it is necessary to be rich. How rich, do you ask?

Enormously – Vanderbiltonically! As were once Messieurs les Anglais in the land of Dupleix and Plassey.

Ces Anglais who have now disappeared.

You smile? It is not so then?

I have with my proper eyes seen them abolished – assimilated – blotted out – these Consuls and Pro-Consuls so arrogant. Listen to my tale.

The Roupé was a coin abnormal – monstrous.

It wavered.

Have you ever seen a franc waver? A Napoleon? No, ten thousand times.

The English are a nation of drunkards. All drunkards waver. The Roupé caught the contagion. Voila the explication. Let us return to our sheep.

I abhor the involutions of Finance. They are to me detestable. And why? Alas, I am poor always.!

But this Roupé.

It wavered. It flickered. It sank. It descended.

It contracted itself as a lady in her corsage.

Have you, my pupil so virtuous, ever seen a lady in her corsage?

She contracts marvellously.

She is also lovely.

The Roupé contracted. But it was not lovely.

It was one schelling and eight pence.

It was one schelling and five pence.

It was one schelliing and two pence.

These English, once so arrogant, had been despondent.

They now laughed. It was the laughter of the Pit.

They grew reckless. It was the ferocious abandon of the unpitied.

The Englishman reckless, is the brute bestial.