[By This It Seems As If The Author Of The Fragment Had Not Been A Frenchman.]

The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against it is, that if there is

But a capfull of wind in or about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu'd there than in any other aperture of the whole city, - and with reason good and cogent, Messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde d'eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth.

The poor notary, just as he was passing by the sentry, instinctively clapp'd his cane to the side of it, but in raising it up, the point of his cane catching hold of the loop of the sentinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the ballustrade clear into the Seine. -

- '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?

As the notary was passing on by a dark passage, complaining in this sort, a voice call'd out to a girl, to bid her run for the next notary. - Now the notary being the next, and availing himself of his situation, walk'd up the passage to the door, and passing through an old sort of a saloon, was usher'd into a large chamber, dismantled of everything but a long military pike, - a breastplate,- -a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung up, equidistant, in four different places against the wall.

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