It is not mal-a-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 serves for
every unexpected throw of the dice in life.
Le Diable! which is the first, and positive degree, is generally
used upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only
fall out contrary to your expectations; such as - the throwing once
doublets - La Fleur's being kick'd 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, and leaving La Fleur
aground in jack-boots, - 'tis the second degree.
'Tis then Peste!
And for the third -
- But here my heart is wrung with pity 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! - what ever 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.
NAMPONT. THE DEAD ASS.
- 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, - look'd 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 his ass's bridle, - looked wistfully at the little arrangement he
had made - and then gave a sigh.
