down to the ground as he said it. - Et encore, Monsieur, said he,
may change his sentiments; - and if (par hazard) he should like to
amuse himself, - I find no
amusement in it, said I, interrupting
him. -
Mon Dieu! said La Fleur, - and took away.
In an hour's time he came to put me to bed, and was more than
commonly officious: - something hung upon his lips to say to me, or
ask me, which he could not get off: I could not
conceive what it
was, and indeed gave myself little trouble to find it out, as I had
another
riddle so much more interesting upon my mind, which was
that of the man's asking
charity before the door of the hotel. - I
would have given anything to have got to the bottom of it; and
that, not out of
curiosity, - 'tis so low a principle of enquiry,
in general, I would not purchase the
gratification of it with a
two-sous piece; - but a secret, I thought, which so soon and so
certainly soften'd the heart of every woman you came near, was a
secret at least equal to the philosopher's stone; had I both the
Indies, I would have given up one to have been master of it.
I toss'd and turn'd it almost all night long in my brains to no
manner of purpose; and when I awoke in the morning, I found my
spirits as much troubled with my dreams, as ever the King of
Babylon had been with his; and I will not
hesitate to
affirm, it
would have puzzled all the wise men of Paris as much as those of
Chaldea to have given its interpretation.
LE DIMANCHE. PARIS.
It was Sunday; and when La Fleur came in, in the morning, with my
coffee and roll and butter, he had got himself so gallantly
array'd, I
scarce knew him.
I had covenanted at Montreuil to give him a new hat with a silver
button and loop, and four louis d'ors, pour s'adoniser, when we got
to Paris; and the poor fellow, to do him justice, had done wonders
with it.
He had bought a bright, clean, good
scarlet coat, and a pair of
breeches of the same. - They were not a crown worse, he said, for
the wearing. - I wish'd him hang'd for telling me. - They look'd so
fresh, that though I knew the thing could not be done, yet I would
rather have imposed upon my fancy with thinking I had bought them
new for the fellow, than that they had come out of the Rue de
Friperie.
This is a nicety which makes not the heart sore at Paris.
He had purchased,
moreover, a handsome blue satin waistcoat,
fancifully enough embroidered: - this was indeed something the
worse for the service it had done, but 'twas clean scour'd; - the
gold had been touch'd up, and upon the whole was rather showy than
otherwise; - and as the blue was not
violent, it suited with the
coat and
breeches very well: he had squeez'd out of the money,
moreover, a new bag and a solitaire; and had insisted with the
fripier upon a gold pair of garters to his
breeches knees. - He had
purchased
muslin ruffles, bien brodees, with four livres of his own
money; - and a pair of white silk stockings for five more; - and to
top all, nature had given him a handsome figure, without costing
him a sous.
He entered the room thus set off, with his hair dressed in the
first style, and with a handsome
bouquet in his breast. - In a
word, there was that look of
festivity in everything about him,
which at once put me in mind it was Sunday; - and, by combining
both together, it
instantly struck me, that the favour he wish'd to
ask of me the night before, was to spend the day as every body in
Paris spent it besides. I had
scarce made the
conjecture, when La
Fleur, with
infinitehumility, but with a look of trust, as if I
should not refuse him, begg'd I would grant him the day, pour faire
le galant vis-e-vis de sa maitresse.
Now it was the very thing I intended to do myself vis-e-vis Madame
de R-. - I had retained the remise on purpose for it, and it would
not have mortified my
vanity to have had a servant so well dress'd
as La Fleur was, to have got up behind it: I never could have worse
spared him.
But we must feel, not argue in these embarrassments. - The sons and
daughters of Service part with liberty, but not with nature, in
their contracts; they are flesh and blood, and have their little
vanities and wishes in the midst of the house of
bondage, as well
as their task-masters; - no doubt, they have set their self-denials
at a price, - and their expectations are so
unreasonable, that I
would often
disappoint them, but that their condition puts it so
much in my power to do it.
Behold, - Behold, I am thy servant - disarms me at once of the
powers of a master. -
Thou shalt go, La Fleur! said I.
- And what
mistress, La Fleur, said I, canst thou have picked up in
so little a time at Paris? La Fleur laid his hand upon his breast,
and said 'twas a petite demoiselle, at Monsieur le Count de B-'s. -
La Fleur had a heart made for society; and, to speak the truth of
him, let as few occasions slip him as his master; - so that somehow
or other, - but how, - heaven knows, - he had connected himself
with the demoiselle upon the
landing of the
staircase, during the
time I was taken up with my
passport; and as there was time enough
for me to win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had contrived to
make it do to win the maid to his. The family, it seems, was to be
at Paris that day, and he had made a party with her, and two or
three more of the Count's household, upon the boulevards.
Happy people! that once a week at least are sure to lay down all
your cares together, and dance and sing and sport away the weights
of
grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth.
THE FRAGMENT. PARIS.
La Fleur had left me something to amuse myself with for the day
more than I had bargain'd for, or could have enter'd either into
his head or mine.
He had brought the little print of butter upon a
currant leaf: and
as the morning was warm, and he had a good step to bring it, he had
begg'd a sheet of waste paper to put betwixt the
currant leaf and
his hand. - As that was plate sufficient, I bade him lay it upon
the table as it was; and as I
resolved to stay within all day, I
ordered him to call upon the traiteur, to bespeak my dinner, and
leave me to breakfast by myself.
When I had finished the butter, I threw the
currant-leaf out of the
window, and was going to do the same by the waste paper; - but
stopping to read a line first, and that
drawing me on to a second
and third, - I thought it better worth; so I shut the window, and
drawing a chair up to it, I sat down to read it.
It was in the old French of Rabelais's time, and for aught I know
might have been wrote by him: - it was
moreover in a Gothic letter,
and that so faded and gone off by damps and length of time, it cost
me
infinite trouble to make anything of it. - I threw it down; and
then wrote a letter to Eugenius; - then I took it up again, and
embroiled my
patience with it afresh; - and then to cure that, I
wrote a letter to Eliza. - Still it kept hold of me; and the
difficulty of understanding it increased but the desire.
I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with a bottle
of Burgundy; I at it again, - and, after two or three hours poring
upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon
did upon a nonsensical
inscription, I thought I made sense of it;
but to make sure of it, the best way, I imagined, was to turn it
into English, and see how it would look then; - so I went on
leisurely, as a
trifling man does, sometimes
writing a
sentence, -
then
taking a turn or two, - and then looking how the world went,
out of the window; so that it was nine o'clock at night before I
had done it. - I then began and read it as follows.
THE FRAGMENT. PARIS.
- Now, as the notary's wife disputed the point with the notary with
too much heat, - I wish, said the notary, (throwing down the
parchment) that there was another notary here only to set down and
attest all this. -
- And what would you do then, Monsieur? said she, rising hastily
up. - The notary's wife was a little fume of a woman, and the
notary thought it well to avoid a
hurricane by a mild reply. - I
would go, answered he, to bed. - You may go to the devil, answer'd
the notary's wife.
Now there
happening to be but one bed in the house, the other two
rooms being unfurnished, as is the custom at Paris, and the notary
not caring to lie in the same bed with a woman who had but that
moment sent him pell mell to the devil, went forth with his hat and
cane and short cloak, the night being very windy, and walk'd out,
ill at ease, towards the Pont Neuf.
Of all the
bridges which ever were built, the whole world who have
pass'd over the Pont Neuf must own, that it is the noblest, - the
finest, - the grandest, - the lightest, - the longest, - the
broadest, that ever conjoin'd land and land together upon the face
of the terraqueous globe.
[By this it seems as if the author of the
fragment had not been a
Frenchman.]
The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can
allege against it is, that if there is but a capfull of wind in or
about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu'd there than in any
other
aperture of the whole city, - and with reason good and
cogent, Messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde
d'eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who
cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two
livres and a half, which is its full worth.
The poor notary, just as he was passing by the
sentry,
instinctively clapp'd his cane to the side of it, but in raising it
up, the point of his cane catching hold of the loop of the
sentinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the ballustrade clear
into the Seine. -
- 'Tis an ill wind, said a
boatman, who catched it, which blows
nobody any good.
The
sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently twirled up his whiskers,
and levell'd his arquebuss.
Arquebusses in those days went off with matches; and an old woman's
paper
lantern at the end of the
bridgehappening to be blown out,
she had borrow'd the
sentry's match to light it: - it gave a
moment's time for the Gascon's blood to run cool, and turn the
accident better to his
advantage. - 'Tis an ill wind, said he,
catching off the notary's castor, and legitimating the
capture with
the
boatman's adage.
The poor notary crossed the
bridge, and passing along the Rue de
Dauphine into the fauxbourgs of St. Germain, lamented himself as he
walked along in this manner: -
Luckless man that I am! said the notary, to be the sport of
hurricanes all my days: - to be born to have the storm of ill
language levell'd against me and my
professionwherever I go; to be
forced into marriage by the
thunder of the church to a
tempest of a
woman; - to be
driven forth out of my house by
domestic winds, and
despoil'd of my castor by pontific ones! - to be here, bareheaded,
in a windy night, at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of accidents!
- Where am I to lay my head? - Miserable man! what wind in the two-
and-thirty points of the whole
compass can blow unto thee, as it
does to the rest of thy fellow-creatures, good?
As the notary was passing on by a dark passage, complaining in this
sort, a voice call'd out to a girl, to bid her run for the next
notary. - Now the notary being the next, and availing himself of
his situation, walk'd up the passage to the door, and passing
through an old sort of a
saloon, was usher'd into a large chamber,
dismantled of everything but a long military pike, - a breastplate,
- a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung up, equidistant, in four
different places against the wall.
An old
personage who had
heretofore been a gentleman, and unless
decay of fortune taints the blood along with it, was a gentleman at
that time, lay supporting his head upon his hand in his bed; a
little table with a taper burning was set close beside it, and
close by the table was placed a chair: - the notary sat him down in
it; and pulling out his inkhorn and a sheet or two of paper which