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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



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