Second
and third, - I thought it better worth; so I shut the window, and
drawing a chair up to it, I sat down to read it.
It was in the old French of Rabelais's time, and for aught I know
might have been wrote by him: - it was moreover in a Gothic letter,
and that so faded and gone off by damps and length of time, it cost
me infinite trouble to make anything of it. - I threw it down; and
then wrote a letter to Eugenius; - then I took it up again, and
embroiled my patience with it afresh; - and then to cure that, I
wrote a letter to Eliza. - Still it kept hold of me; and the
difficulty of understanding it increased but the desire.
I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with a bottle
of Burgundy; I at it again, - and, after two or three hours poring
upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon
did upon a nonsensical inscription, I thought I made sense of it;
but to make sure of it, the best way, I imagined, was to turn it
into English, and see how it would look then; - so I went on
leisurely, as a trifling man does, sometimes writing a sentence, -
then taking a turn or two, - and then looking how the world went,
out of the window; so that it was nine o'clock at night before I
had done it. - I then began and read it as follows.
THE FRAGMENT. PARIS.
- Now, as the notary's wife disputed the point with the notary with
too much heat, - I wish, said the notary, (throwing down the
parchment) that there was another notary here only to set down and
attest all this. -
- And what would you do then, Monsieur? said she, rising hastily
up. - The notary's wife was a little fume of a woman, and the notary
thought it well to avoid a hurricane by a mild reply. - I would go,
answered he, to bed. - You may go to the devil, answer'd the
notary's wife.
Now there happening to be but one bed in the house, the other two
rooms being unfurnished, as is the custom at Paris, and the notary
not caring to lie in the same bed with a woman who had but that
moment sent him pell mell to the devil, went forth with his hat and
cane and short cloak, the night being very windy, and walk'd out,
ill at ease, towards the Pont Neuf.
Of all the bridges which ever were built, the whole world who have
pass'd over the Pont Neuf must own, that it is the noblest, - the
finest, - the grandest, - the lightest, - the longest, - the broadest,
that ever conjoin'd land and land together upon the face of the
terraqueous globe.
