LXXXI. La chambre du boulanger retiré
LXXXI. The Retired Baker's Room
Berne's radical-to-conservative shift, a failed Madrid insurrection, and the potato blight dominate this issue.
- Radical agitators in Madrid, some 300 strong, clashed with the Navarre and Galicia regiments near the Prado on the night of 5 September; eight to ten were killed, twenty arrested, and a court-martial convened by midnight.
- Ecuador's three-time president General Juan José Flores voluntarily surrendered power after four battles, accepting a pension and two years' exile in Europe — arriving in England and expected in Paris within days.
- The Berne government, having lately encouraged the radical francs-tireurs routed at Lucerne on 30 March, abruptly reversed course: it expelled German professor Snell, launched a state-funded newspaper, and sought a vote of confidence from the Grand Council.
- A prizefight between English heavyweight champion Ben Caunt and William 'Bendigo' Thompson drew more than 10,000 spectators; after 93 rounds lasting two hours and eight minutes, Caunt sat down without being struck and was declared the loser.
- Laundress-thief girl Torfer, convicted six times previously, was sentenced to six years of hard labour for stealing a dress and bonnets from a street-hawker — then was found wearing the stolen dress when her victim spotted her in the Rue Saint-Bernard.
- Reviewing eight finalists for the Grand Prix d'Architecture — whose brief was a domed cathedral — critic Delécluze found M. Delaage's plan alone truly impressive, praising its dome set on piers wider than the nave, while faulting all others for domes too narrow to read as cathedrals.
- Belgian botanist Professor Morren compiled British case studies showing potatoes planted in autumn at ten-to-twelve inches depth, sometimes dusted with sulphate of lime, survived hard frosts and yielded abundant harvests — recommending the method as an immediate remedy for the blight.
- Paris's 'Grand-Colbert' draper's shop was displaying square cashmere shawls at 38 francs and long shawls at 83 francs — goods that had cost, respectively, three times as much and 300 francs only a few years earlier.