- And yet you would not permit this, said the old officer,
in England.
- In England, dear Sir, said I, WE SIT ALL AT OUR EASE.
The old French officer would have set me at unity with myself, in
case I had been at variance, - by saying it was a bon mot; - and, as
a bon mot is always worth something at Paris, he offered me a pinch
of snuff.
THE ROSE. PARIS.
It was now my turn to ask the old French officer "What was the
matter?" for a cry of "Haussez les mains, Monsieur l'Abbe!" re-
echoed from a dozen different parts of the parterre, was as
unintelligible to me, as my apostrophe to the monk had been to him.
He told me it was some poor Abbe in one of the upper loges, who, he
supposed, had got planted perdu behind a couple of grisettes in
order to see the opera, and that the parterre espying him, were
insisting upon his holding up both his hands during the
representation. - And can it be supposed, said I, that an
ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes' pockets? The old French
officer smiled, and whispering in my ear, opened a door of
knowledge which I had no idea of.
Good God! said I, turning pale with astonishment - is it possible,
that a people so smit with sentiment should at the same time be so
unclean, and so unlike themselves, - Quelle grossierte! added I.
The French officer told me, it was an illiberal sarcasm at the
church, which had begun in the theatre about the time the Tartuffe
was given in it by Moliere: but like other remains of Gothic
manners, was declining. - Every nation, continued he, have their
refinements and grossiertes, in which they take the lead, and lose
it of one another by turns: - that he had been in most countries,
but never in one where he found not some delicacies, which others
seemed to want. Le POUR et le CONTRE se trouvent en chaque nation;
there is a balance, said he, of good and bad everywhere; and
nothing but the knowing it is so, can emancipate one half of the
world from the prepossession which it holds against the other: -
that the advantage of travel, as it regarded the scavoir vivre, was
by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual
toleration; and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow,
taught us mutual love.
The old French officer delivered this with an air of such candour
and good sense, as coincided with my first favourable impressions
of his character: - I thought I loved the man; but I fear I mistook
the object; - 'twas my own way of thinking - the difference was, I
could not have expressed it half so well.
It is alike troublesome to both the rider and his beast, - if the
latter goes pricking up his ears, and starting all the way at every
object which he never saw before. - I have as little torment of this
kind as any creature alive; and yet I honestly confess, that many a
thing gave me pain, and that I blush'd at many a word the first
month, - which I found inconsequent and perfectly innocent the
second.
Madame do Rambouliet, after an acquaintance of about six weeks with
her, had done me the honour to take me in her coach about two
leagues out of town. - Of all women, Madame de Rambouliet is the
most correct; and I never wish to see one of more virtues and
purity of heart. - In our return back, Madame de Rambouliet desired
me to pull the cord. - I asked her if she wanted anything - Rien que
pour pisser, said Madame de Rambouliet.
Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet p-ss on.-
-And, ye fair mystic nymphs! go each one PLUCK YOUR ROSE, and
scatter them in your path, - for Madame de Rambouliet did no more. -
I handed Madame de Rambouliet out of the coach; and had I been the
priest of the chaste Castalia, I could not have served at her
fountain with a more respectful decorum.
THE FILLE DE CHAMBRE. PARIS.
What the old French officer had delivered upon travelling, bringing
Polonius's advice to his son upon the same subject into my head, -
and that bringing in Hamlet, and Hamlet the rest of Shakespeare's
works, I stopp'd at the Quai de Conti in my return home, to
purchase the whole set.
The bookseller said he had not a set in the world. Comment! said
I, taking one up out of a set which lay upon the counter betwixt
us. - He said they were sent him only to be got bound, and were to
be sent back to Versailles in the morning to the Count de B-.
- And does the Count de B-, said I, read Shakespeare? C'est un
esprit fort, replied the bookseller. - He loves English books! and
what is more to his honour, Monsieur, he loves the English too.
You speak this so civilly, said I, that it is enough to oblige an
Englishman to lay out a louis d'or or two at your shop. - The
bookseller made a bow, and was going to say something, when a young
decent girl about twenty, who by her air and dress seemed to be
fille de chambre to some devout woman of fashion, come into the
shop and asked for Les Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit: the
bookseller gave her the book directly; she pulled out a little
green satin purse run round with a riband of the same colour, and
putting her finger and thumb into it, she took out the money and
paid for it. As I had nothing more to stay me in the shop, we both
walk'd out at the door together.
- And what have you to do, my dear, said I, with The Wanderings of
the Heart, who scarce know yet you have one?
