pauvre honteux could say nothing, he pulled 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 cantered 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 kicked 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 Montriul.- -Peste! said La Fleur.

It is not mal-à-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 serve for every unexpected throw of the dice in life.

Le Diable! which is the first and positive degree, is generally used in ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only fall out contrary to your expectations, such as the throwing one's doublets, La Fleur's being kicked 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 leaving La Fleur aground in jack-boots,-'tis the second degree;

"Tis then Peste!

And for the third

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!-whatever 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.

THE DEAD ASS. NAMPONT.

-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,-looked 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 the 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 among the rest, whilst the horses were getting ready. As I continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over their heads.

1 Post-horse.

many; but having in one week lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the

and yet I instantly reproached my heart with it in the bitterest and most reprobate of expressions.

It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one and my last flame happening to be blown out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months before, swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the whole journey.-Why should I dissemble the matter? I had sworn to her eternal fidelity; she had a right to my whole heart. To divide my affections was to lessen them ;-to expose them was to risk them; where there is risk, there may be loss :-and what wilt thou have, Yorick, to answer to a heart so full of trust and confidence,-so good, so gentle, and unreproaching!

-I will not go to Brussels, replied I, interrupting myself;-but my imagination went on, -I recalled her looks at that crisis of our separation, when neither of us had power to say adieu! I looked at the picture she had tied in a black riband about my neck,-and blushed as I looked at it.-I would have given the world to have kissed it, but was ashamed ;-and shall this tender flower, said I, pressing it between my hands, shall it be smitten to its very root, -and smitten, Yorick! by thee, who hast promised to shelter it in thy breast?

Eternal Fountain of Happiness! said I, kneeling down upon the ground-be thou my witness, -and every pure spirit which tastes it, be my witness also, that I would not travel to Brussels, unless Eliza went along with me, did the road lead me towards heaven!

In transports of this kind the heart, in spite of the understanding, will always say too much.

THE LETTER.

AMIENS.

FORTUNE had not smiled upon La Fleur; for he had been unsuccessful in his feats of chivalry,and not one thing had offered to signalize his zeal for my service from the time he had entered into it, which was almost four-and-twenty hours. The poor soul burned with impatience; and the Count de L's servant coming with the letter, being the first practicable occasion which offered, La Fleur had laid hold of it, and, in order to do honour to his master, had taken him into a backparlour in the auberge, and treated him with a cup or two of the best wine in Picardy; and the Count de L's servant, in return, not to be behindhand in politeness with La Fleur, had taken him back with him to the Count's hotel. La Fleur's prevenancy (for there was a passport in his very looks) soon set every servant in the kitchen at ease with him; and as a Frenchman, whatever be his talents, has no sort of prudery

in showing them, La Fleur in less than five minutes had pulled out his fife, and leading off the dance himself with the first note, set the fille de chambre, the maitre d'hotel, the cook, the scullion, and all the household, dogs and cats, besides an an old monkey, a dancing! I suppose there never was a merrier kitchen since the flood.

Madame de L, in passing from her brother's apartments to her own, hearing so much jollity below stairs, rung up her fille de chambre to ask about it; and hearing it was the English gentleman's servant who had set the whole house merry with his pipe, she ordered him up.

As the poor fellow could not present himself empty, he had loaded himself, in going up-stairs, with a thousand compliments to Madame de Lon the part of his master; added a long apocrypha of inquiries after Madame de L―'s health; told her that monsieur his master was au desespoire for her re-establishment from the fatigues of her journey; and to close all, that monsieur had received the letter which madame had done him the honour. . . . And he has done me the honour, said Madame de L―, interrupting La Fleur, to send a billet in return.

Madame de L-said this with such a tone of reliance upon the fact that La Fleur had not power to disappoint her expectations ;-he trembled for my honour-and possibly might not altogether be unconcerned for his own, as a man capable of being attached to a master who could be wanting en egards vis à vis d'une femme so that, when Madame de L- asked La Fleur if he had brought a letter O qu'oui, said La Fleur; so, laying down his hat upon the ground, and taking hold of the flap of his right side-pocket with his left hand, he began to search for the letter with his right;-then contrariwise-Diable !-then sought every pocket, pocket by pocket, round, not forgetting his fob; -Peste-then La Fleur emptied them upon the floor,-pulled out a dirty cravat-a handkerchief- -a comb-a whip-lash-a night-cap,then gave a peep into his hat-Quelle etourderies! He had left the letter upon the table in the auberge;-he would run for it, and be back with it in three minutes.

I had just finished my supper when La Fleur came in to give me an account of his adventure; he told the whole story simply as it was; and only added that, if monsieur had forgot (par hazard) to answer madame's letter, the arrangement gave him an opportunity to recover the faux pas ;-and if not, that things were only as they were.

Now, I was not altogether sure of my etiquette, whether I ought to have wrote or no; but if I had, a devil himself could not have been angry: 'twas but the officious zeal of a well-meaning creature for my honour; and however he might have mistook the road, or embarrassed me in so doing, his heart was in no fault-I was under no

necessity to write ;-and, what weighed more than all, he did not look as if he had done amiss.

'Tis all very well, La Fleur, said I.'Twas sufficient. La Fleur flew out of the room like lightning, and returned with pen, ink, and paper in his hand; and, coming up to the table, laid them close before me with such a delight in his countenance that I could not help taking up the pen.

I began, and began again; and, though I had nothing to say, and that nothing might have been expressed in half a dozen lines, I made half a dozen different beginnings, and could no way please myself.

In short, I was in no mood to write. La Fleur stepped out and brought a little water in a glass to dilute my ink-then fetched sand and seal-wax. It was all one; I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burnt, and wrote again. Le Diable l'emporte, said I, half to my self-I cannot write this self-same letter, throwing the pen down despairingly as I said it.

As soon as I had cast down my pen, La Fleur advanced with the most respectful carriage up to the table, and, making a thousand apologies for the liberty he was going to take, told me he had a letter in his pocket, wrote by a drummer in his regiment to a corporal's wife, which, he durst say, would suit the occasion.

I had a mind to let the poor fellow have his humour. Then prithee, said I, let me see it. La Fleur instantly pulled out a little dirty pocket-book, crammed full of small letters and billet-doux in a sad condition; and laying it upon the table, and then untying the string which held them all together, ran them over, one by one, till he came to the letter in question. La voila, said he, clapping his hands; so, unfolding it first, he laid it before me, and retired three steps from the table whilst I read it.

THE LETTER.

MADAME,-Je suis penetré de la douleur la plus vive, et reduit en même temps au desespoir par ce retour imprevû du Corporal, qui rend notre entrevue de ce soir la chose du monde la plus impossible.

It was but changing the Corporal into the Count-and saying nothing about mounting guard on Wednesday,-and the letter was neither right nor wrong;-so, to gratify the poor fellow, who stood trembling for my honour, his own, and the honour of his letter, I took the cream gently off it,—and, whipping it up in my own way, sealed it up, and sent it to Madame de L; and the next morning we pursued our journey to Paris.

PARIS.

WHEN a man can contest the point by dint of equipage, and carry on all floundering before him with half a dozen lacqueys and a couple of cooks-'tis very well in such a place as Paris,he may drive in at which end of a street he will.

A poor prince, who is weak in cavalry, and whose whole infantry does not exceed a single man, had best quit the field, and signalize himself in the cabinet, if he can get up into it ;-I say up into it, for there is no descending perpendicularly amongst 'em with a 'Me voici, mes enfans,' here I am,-whatever many may think.

I own, my first sensations, as soon as I was left solitary and alone in my own chamber in the hotel, were far from being so flattering as I had prefigured them. I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black coat, and, looking through the glass, saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure. -The old with broken lances, and in helmets which had lost their vizards;-the young, in armour bright, which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the east,-all-alltilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore, for fame and love.

...

Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing here? On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter, thou art reduced to an atom; seek-seek some winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled, nor flambeau shot its rays;-there thou mayest solace thy soul in converse sweet with some kind grisette of a barber's wife, and get into such coteries!———

L'amour n'est rein sans sentiment.

Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour. On dit qu'on ne doit jamais se desesperer. On dit aussi que Monsieur le Corporal monte le garde Mercredi: alors ce sera mon tour.

Chacun à son tour.

thing I do. So I called La Fleur to go seek me a barber directly, and come back and brush my coat.

THE WIG.

PARIS.

telle!

Je suis, Madame, Avec toutes les sentiments les plus respecteux et les plus tendres,

tout à vous,

JAQUES ROQUE.

either above or below his art: I had nothing to do but to take one ready made of his own recommendation.

-But I fear, friend, said I, this buckle won't stand. You may immerse it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand.