Madame de L-, in passing from her brother’s apartments to her own, hearing so much jollity below stairs, rung up her fille de chambre to ask about it; and, hearing it was the English gentleman’s servant, who had set the whole house merry with his pipe, she ordered him up.
As the poor fellow could not present himself empty, he had loaded himself in going up stairs with a thousand compliments to Madame de L-, on the part of his master, - added a long apocrypha of inquiries after Madame de L-’s health, - told her, that Monsieur his master was au désespoire for her re-establishment from the fatigues of her journey, - and, to close all, that Monsieur had received the letter which Madame had done him the honour - And he has done me the honour, said Madame de L-, interrupting La Fleur, to send a billet in return.
Madame de L- had said this with such a tone of reliance upon the fact, that La Fleur had not power to disappoint her expectations; - he trembled for my honour, - and possibly might not altogether be unconcerned for his own, as a man capable of being attached to a master who could be wanting en égards vis à vis d’une femme! so that when Madame de L- asked La Fleur if he had brought a letter, - O qu’oui, said La Fleur: so laying down his hat upon the ground, and taking hold of the flap of his right side pocket with his left hand, he began to search for the letter with his right; - then contrariwise. - Diable! then sought every pocket - pocket by pocket, round, not forgetting his fob: - Peste! - then La Fleur emptied them upon the floor, - pulled out a dirty cravat, - a handkerchief, - a comb, - a whip lash, - a nightcap, - then gave a peep into his hat, - Quelle étourderie! He had left the letter upon the table in the auberge; - he would run for it, and be back with it in three minutes.
I had just finished my supper when La Fleur came in to give me an account of his adventure: he told the whole story simply as it was: and only added that if Monsieur had forgot (par hazard) to answer Madame’s letter, the arrangement gave him an opportunity to recover the faux pas; - and if not, that things were only as they were.
Now I was not altogether sure of my étiquette, whether I ought to have wrote or no; - but if I had, - a devil himself could not have been angry: ’twas but the officious zeal of a well meaning creature for my honour; and, however he might have mistook the road, - or embarrassed me in so doing, - his heart was in no fault, - I was under no necessity to write; - and, what weighed more than all, - he did not look as if he had done amiss.
- ’Tis all very well, La Fleur, said I. - ’Twas sufficient. La Fleur flew out of the room like lightning, and returned with pen, ink, and paper, in his hand; and, coming up to the table, laid them close before me, with such a delight in his countenance, that I could not help taking up the pen.
I began and began again; and, though I had nothing to say, and that nothing might have been expressed in half a dozen lines, I made half a dozen different beginnings, and could no way please myself.
In short, I was in no mood to write.
La Fleur stepp’d out and brought a little water in a glass to dilute my ink, - then fetch’d sand and seal-wax. - It was all one; I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burnt, and wrote again. - Le diable l’emporte! said I, half to myself, - I cannot write this self-same letter, throwing the pen down despairingly as I said it.
As soon as I had cast down my pen, La Fleur advanced with the most respectful carriage up to the table, and making a thousand apologies for the liberty he was going to take, told me he had a letter in his pocket wrote by a drummer in his regiment to a corporal’s wife, which he durst say would suit the occasion.
I had a mind to let the poor fellow have his humour. - Then prithee, said I, let me see it.
La Fleur instantly pulled out a little dirty pocket book cramm’d full of small letters and billet-doux in a sad condition, and laying it upon the table, and then untying the string which held them all together, run them over, one by one, till he came to the letter in question, - La voila! said he, clapping his hands: so, unfolding it first, he laid it open before me, and retired three steps from the table whilst I read it.
THE LETTER.
Madame,
Je suis pénétré de la douleur la plus vive, et réduit en même temps au désespoir par ce retour imprévù du Caporal qui rend notre entrevûe de ce soir la chose du monde la plus impossible.
Mais vive la joie! et toute la mienne sera de penser à vous.
L’amour n’est rien sans sentiment.
Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour.
On dit qu’on ne doit jamais se désesperér.
On dit aussi que Monsieur le Caporal monte la garde Mercredi: alors ce cera mon tour.
Chacun à son tour.
En attendant - Vive l’amour! et vive la bagatelle!
Je suis, Madame,
Avec tous les sentimens les plus respectueux et les plus tendres,
tout à vous,
JAQUES ROQUE.
It was but changing the Corporal into the Count, - and saying nothing about mounting guard on Wednesday, - and the letter was neither right nor wrong: - so, to gratify the poor fellow, who stood trembling for my honour, his own, and the honour of his letter, - I took the cream gently off it, and whipping it up in my own way, I seal’d it up and sent him with it to Madame de L-; - and the next morning we pursued our journey to Paris.
PARIS.
When a man can contest the point by dint of equipage, and carry all on floundering before him with half a dozen of lackies and a couple of cooks - ’tis very well in such a place as Paris, - he may drive in at which end of a street he will.
A poor prince who is weak in cavalry, and whose whole infantry does not exceed a single man, had best quit the field, and signalize himself in the cabinet, if he can get up into it; - I say up into it - for there is no descending perpendicular amongst ‘em with a “Me voici! mes enfans” - here I am - whatever many may think.
I own my first sensations, as soon as I was left solitary and alone in my own chamber in the hotel, were far from being so flattering as I had prefigured them. I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, and looking through the glass saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure. - The old with broken lances, and in helmets which had lost their vizards; - the young in armour bright which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the east, - all, - all, tilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore for fame and love. -
Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing here? On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter thou art reduced to an atom; - seek, - seek some winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled or flambeau shot its rays; - there thou mayest solace thy soul in converse sweet with some kind grisette of a barber’s wife, and get into such coteries! -
- May I perish! if I do, said I, pulling out the letter which I had to present to Madame de R- - I’ll wait upon this lady, the very first thing I do. So I called La Fleur to go seek me a barber directly, - and come back and brush my coat.
THE WIG. PARIS.
When the barber came, he absolutely refused to have any thing to do with my wig: ’twas either above or below his art: I had nothing to do but to take one ready made of his own recommendation.
- But I fear, friend! said I, this buckle won’t stand. - You may emerge it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand. -
What a great scale is every thing upon in this city thought I. - The utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker’s ideas could have gone no further than to have “dipped it into a pail of water.” - What difference! ’tis like Time to Eternity!
I confess I do hate all cold conceptions, as I do the puny ideas which engender them; and am generally so struck with the great works of nature, that for my own part, if I could help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain at least. All that can be said against the French sublime, in this instance of it, is this: - That the grandeur is more in the word, and less in the thing. No doubt, the ocean fills the mind with vast ideas; but P
aris being so far inland, it was not likely I should run post a hundred miles out of it, to try the experiment; - the Parisian barber meant nothing. -
The pail of water standing beside the great deep, makes, certainly, but a sorry figure in speech; - but, ‘twill be said, - it has one advantage - ’tis in the next room, and the truth of the buckle may be tried in it, without more ado, in a single moment.
In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the matter, The French expression professes more than it performs.
I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national characters more in these nonsensical minutiae than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and stalk so much alike, that I would not give ninepence to choose amongst them.
I was so long in getting from under my barber’s hands, that it was too late to think of going with my letter to Madame R- that night: but when a man is once dressed at all points for going out, his reflections turn to little account; so taking down the name of the Hôtel de Modene, where I lodged, I walked forth without any determination where to go; - I shall consider of that, said I, as I walk along.
THE PULSE. PARIS.
Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight: ’tis ye who open this door and let the stranger in.
- Pray, Madame, said I, have the goodness to tell me which way I must turn to go to the Opéra Comique? - Most willingly, Monsieur, said she, laying aside her work. -
I had given a cast with my eye into half a dozen shops, as I came along, in search of a face not likely to be disordered by such an interruption: till at last, this, hitting my fancy, I had walked in.
She was working a pair of ruffles, as she sat in a low chair, on the far side of the shop, facing the door.
- Tres volontiers, most willingly, said she, laying her work down upon a chair next her, and rising up from the low chair she was sitting in, with so cheerful a movement, and so cheerful a look, that had I been laying out fifty louis d’ors with her, I should have said - “This woman is grateful.”
You must turn, Monsieur, said she, going with me to the door of the shop, and pointing the way down the street I was to take, - you must turn first to your left hand, - mais prenez garde - there are two turns; and be so good as to take the second - then go down a little way and you’ll see a church: and, when you are past it, give yourself the trouble to turn directly to the right, and that will lead you to the foot of the Pont Neuf, which you must cross - and there any one will do himself the pleasure to show you. -
She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with the same goodnatur’d patience the third time as the first; - and if tones and manners have a meaning, which certainly they have, unless to hearts which shut them out, - she seemed really interested that I should not lose myself.
I will not suppose it was the woman’s beauty, notwithstanding she was the handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which had much to do with the sense I had of her courtesy; only I remember, when I told her how much I was obliged to her, that I looked very full in her eyes, - and that I repeated my thanks as often as she had done her instructions.
I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I had forgot every tittle of what she had said; - so looking back, and seeing her still standing in the door of the shop, as if to look whether I went right or not, - I returned back to ask her, whether the first turn was to my right or left, - for that I had absolutely forgot. - Is it possible! said she, half laughing. ’Tis very possible, replied I, when a man is thinking more of a woman than of her good advice.
As this was the real truth - she took it, as every woman takes a matter of right, with a slight curtsey.
- Attendez! said she, laying her hand upon my arm to detain me, whilst she called a lad out of the back shop to get ready a parcel of gloves. I am just going to send him, said she, with a packet into that quarter, and if you will have the complaisance to step in, it will be ready in a moment, and he shall attend you to the place. - So I walk’d in with her to the far side of the shop: and taking up the ruffle in my hand which she laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit, she sat down herself in her low chair, and I instantly sat myself down beside her.
- He will be ready, Monsieur, said she, in a moment. - And in that moment, replied I, most willingly would I say something very civil to you for all these courtesies. Any one may do a casual act of good nature, but a continuation of them shows it is a part of the temperature; and certainly, added I, if it is the same blood which comes from the heart which descends to the extremes (touching her wrist) I am sure you must have one of the best pulses of any woman in the world. - Feel it, said she, holding out her arm. So laying down my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the two forefingers of my other to the artery. -
- Would to heaven! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lack-a-day-sical manner, counting the throbs of it, one by one, with as much true devotion as if I had been watching the critical ebb or flow of her fever. - How wouldst thou have laugh’d and moralized upon my new profession! - and thou shouldst have laugh’d and moralized on. - Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I should have said, “There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.” - But a grisette’s! thou wouldst have said, - and in an open shop! Yorick -
- So much the better: for when my views are direct, Eugenius, I care not if all the world saw me feel it.
THE HUSBAND. PARIS.
I had counted twenty pulsations, and was going on fast towards the fortieth, when her husband, coming unexpected from a back parlour into the shop, put me a little out of my reckoning. - ’Twas nobody but her husband, she said; - so I began a fresh score. - Monsieur is so good, quoth she, as he pass’d by us, as to give himself the trouble of feeling my pulse. - The husband took off his hat, and making me a bow, said, I did him too much honour - and having said that, he put on his hat and walk’d out.
Good God! said I to myself, as he went out, - and can this man be the husband of this woman!
Let it not torment the few who know what must have been the grounds of this exclamation, if I explain it to those who do not.
In London a shopkeeper and a shopkeeper’s wife seem to be one bone and one flesh: in the several endowments of mind and body, sometimes the one, sometimes the other has it, so as, in general, to be upon a par, and totally with each other as nearly as man and wife need to do.
In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more different: for the legislative and executive powers of the shop not resting in the husband, he seldom comes there: - in some dark and dismal room behind, he sits commerce-less, in his thrum nightcap, the same rough son of Nature that Nature left him.
The genius of a people, where nothing but the monarchy is salique, having ceded this department, with sundry others, totally to the women, - by a continual higgling with customers of all ranks and sizes from morning to night, like so many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collisions they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant: - Monsieur le Mari is little better than the stone under your foot.
- Surely, - surely, man! it is not good for thee to sit alone: - thou wast made for social intercourse and gentle greetings; and this improvement of our natures from it I appeal to as my evidence.
- And how does it beat, Monsieur? said she. - With all the benignity, said I, looking quietly in her eyes, that I expected. - She was going to say something civil in return - but the lad came into the shop with the gloves. - Á propos, said I, I want a couple of pairs myself.
THE GLOVES. PARIS.
The beautiful grisette rose up when I said this, and going behind the counter, reach’d down a parcel and untied it: I advanced to the side over against her: they were all too large. The beautiful grisette
measured them one by one across my hand. - It would not alter their dimensions. - She begg’d I would try a single pair, which seemed to be the least. - She held it open; - my hand slipped into it at once. - It will not do, said I, shaking my head a little. - No, said she, doing the same thing.
There are certain combined looks of simple subtlety, - where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together, could not express them; - they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. I leave it to your men of words to swell pages about it - it is enough in the present to say again, the gloves would not do; so, folding our hands within our arms, we both lolled upon the counter - it was narrow, and there was just room for the parcel to lay between us.
The beautiful grisette looked sometimes at the gloves, then sideways to the window, then at the gloves, - and then at me. I was not disposed to break silence: - I followed her example: so, I looked at the gloves, then to the window, then at the gloves, and then at her, - and so on alternately.
Complete Works of Laurence Sterne Page 68
