-
- '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 bridge happening 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 profession wherever 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?
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