Part 75

C H A P. XCII

THERE is not a town in all France which, in my opinion, looks better in the map, than MONTREUIL;——I own, it does not look so well in the book of post-roads; but when you come to see it—to be sure it looks most pitifully.

There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that is, the inn-keeper’s daughter: She has been eighteen months at Amiens, and six at Paris, in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.——

—A slut! in running them over within these five minutes that I have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread stocking——yes, yes—I see, you cunning gipsy!—’tis long and taper—you need not pin it to your knee—and that ’tis your own—and fits you exactly.——

——That Nature should have told this creature a word about a statue’s thumb!

—But as this sample is worth all their thumbs—besides, I have her thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to me,—and as Janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing——may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,—if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.——

—But your worships chuse rather that I give you the length, breadth, and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the façade of the abbey of Saint Austreberte which has been transported from Artois hither—every thing is just I suppose as the masons and carpenters left them,—and if the belief in Christ continues so long, will be so these fifty years to come—so your worships and reverences may all measure them at your leisures——but he who measures thee, Janatone, must do it now—thou carriest the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are passed and gone, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes——or thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty—nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy—and lose thyself.—I would not answer for my aunt Dinah, was she alive——’faith, scarce for her picture——were it but painted by Reynolds—

But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of Apollo, I’ll be shot——

So you must e’en be content with the original; which, if the evening is fine in passing thro’ Montreuil, you will see at your chaise-door, as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have—you had better stop:—She has a little of the devote: but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour——

—L— help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil.

C H A P. XCIII

ALL which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much nearer me than I imagined——I wish I was at Abbeville, quoth I, were it only to see how they card and spin——so off we set.

de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi de Nampont a Bernay - - - - - - poste de Bernay a Nouvion - - - - - poste de Nouvion a ABBEVILLE poste ——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.

Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762.

C H A P. XCIV

WHAT a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter.

C H A P. XCV

WAS I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster——I should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house——but rather in some decent inn——at home, I know it,——the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention——but mark. This inn should not be the inn at Abbeville——if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so

Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning——Yes, by four, Sir,——or by Genevieve! I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.

C H A P. XCVI

“MAKE them like unto a wheel,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop Hall, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which David ever utter’d against the enemies of the Lord—and, as if he had said, “I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.”—So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven.

Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy——and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil——

Hollo! Ho!——the whole world’s asleep!——bring out the horses——grease the wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail into that moulding——I’ll not lose a moment——

Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto, for that would make an Ixion’s wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop’s habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in Palestine at that time or not——and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country.

I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their “Χωξισμον απο τκ Εωμαιος, εις το καλως φιλοσοφειν”——[their] “getting out of the body, in order to think well.”

No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre——REASON is, half of it, SENSE; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appetites and concoctions.——

——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong?

You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early.