Cried all the powers of nature,
stirring within me; - so I gave him - no matter what - I am ashamed to
say HOW MUCH now, - and was ashamed to think how little, then: so,
if the reader can form any conjecture of my disposition, as these
two fixed points are given him, he may judge within a livre or two
what was the precise sum.
I could afford nothing for the rest, but Dieu vous benisse!
- Et le bon Dieu vous benisse encore, said the old soldier, the
dwarf, &c. The pauvre honteux could say nothing; - he pull'd out a
little handkerchief, and wiped his face as he turned away - and I
thought he thanked me more than them all.
THE BIDET.
Having settled all these little matters, I got into my post-chaise
with more ease than ever I got into a post-chaise in my life; and
La Fleur having got one large jack-boot on the far side of a little
bidet, and another on this (for I count nothing of his legs) - he
canter'd away before me as happy and as perpendicular as a prince.-
-But what is happiness! what is grandeur in this painted scene of
life! A dead ass, before we had got a league, put a sudden stop to
La Fleur's career; - his bidet would not pass by it, - a contention
arose betwixt them, and the poor fellow was kick'd out of his jack-
boots the very first kick.
La Fleur bore his fall like a French Christian, saying neither more
nor less upon it, than Diable! So presently got up, and came to
the charge again astride his bidet, beating him up to it as he
would have beat his drum.
The bidet flew from one side of the road to the other, then back
again, - then this way, then that way, and in short, every way but
by the dead ass: - La Fleur insisted upon the thing - and the bidet
threw him.
What's the matter, La Fleur, said I, with this bidet of thine?
Monsieur, said he, c'est un cheval le plus opiniatre du monde. -
Nay, if he is a conceited beast, he must go his own way, replied I.
So La Fleur got off him, and giving him a good sound lash, the
bidet took me at my word, and away he scampered back to Montreuil.-
-Peste! said La Fleur.
It is not mal-a-propos to take notice here, that though La Fleur
availed himself but of two different terms of exclamation in this
encounter, - namely, Diable! and Peste! that there are,
nevertheless, three in the French language: like the positive,
comparative, and superlative, one or the other of which serves for
every unexpected throw of the dice in life.
Le Diable! which is the first, and positive degree, is generally
used upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only
fall out contrary to your expectations; such as - the throwing once
doublets - La Fleur's being kick'd off his horse, and so forth. -
Cuckoldom, for the same reason, is always - Le Diable!
But, in cases where the cast has something provoking in it, as in
that of the bidet's running away after, and leaving La Fleur
aground in jack-boots, - 'tis the second degree.
'Tis then Peste!
And for the third -
- But here my heart is wrung with pity and fellow feeling, when I
reflect what miseries must have been their lot, and how bitterly so
refined a people must have smarted, to have forced them upon the
use of it. -
Grant me, O ye powers which touch the tongue with eloquence in
distress! - what ever is my CAST, grant me but decent words to
exclaim in, and I will give my nature way.
- But as these were not to be had in France, I resolved to take
every evil just as it befell me, without any exclamation at all.
La Fleur, who had made no such covenant with himself, followed the
bidet with his eyes till it was got out of sight, - and then, you
may imagine, if you please, with what word he closed the whole
affair.
As there was no hunting down a frightened horse in jack-boots,
there remained no alternative but taking La Fleur either behind the
chaise, or into it. -
I preferred the latter, and in half an hour we got to the post-
house at Nampont.
NAMPONT. THE DEAD ASS.
- And this, said he, putting the remains of a crust into his
wallet - and this should have been thy portion, said he, hadst thou
been alive to have shared it with me. - I thought, by the accent, it
had been an apostrophe to his child; but 'twas to his ass, and to
the very ass we had seen dead in the road, which had occasioned La
Fleur's misadventure. The man seemed to lament it much; and it
instantly brought into my mind Sancho's lamentation for his; but he
did it with more true touches of nature.
The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with the
ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time
to time, - then laid them down, - look'd at them, and shook his head.
He then took his crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to
eat it; held it some time in his hand, - then laid it upon the bit
of his ass's bridle, - looked wistfully at the little arrangement he
had made - and then gave a sigh.
The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and La Fleur
amongst the rest, whilst the horses were getting ready; as I
continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over
their heads.
- He said he had come last from Spain, where he had been from the
furthest borders of Franconia; and had got so far on his return
home, when his ass died.
