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. - A 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.
I found I lost considerably in every attack: - she had a quick
black eye, and shot through two such long and silken eyelashes with
such penetration, that she look'd into my very heart and reins. - It
may seem strange, but I could actually feel she did. -
It is no matter, said I, taking up a couple of the pairs next me,
and putting them into my pocket.
I was sensible the beautiful grisette had not asked above a single
livre above the price. - I wish'd she had asked a livre more, and
was puzzling my brains how to bring the matter about.
