Task-masters; - no doubt, they have set their self-denials
at a price, - and their expectations are so unreasonable, that I
would often disappoint them, but that their condition puts it so
much in my power to do it.
BEHOLD, - BEHOLD, I AM THY SERVANT - disarms me at once of the powers
of a master. -
Thou shalt go, La Fleur! said I.
- And what mistress, La Fleur, said I, canst thou have picked up in
so little a time at Paris? La Fleur laid his hand upon his breast,
and said 'twas a petite demoiselle, at Monsieur le Count de B-'s. -
La Fleur had a heart made for society; and, to speak the truth of
him, let as few occasions slip him as his master; - so that somehow
or other, - but how, - heaven knows, - he had connected himself with
the demoiselle upon the landing of the staircase, during the time I
was taken up with my passport; and as there was time enough for me
to win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had contrived to make it
do to win the maid to his. The family, it seems, was to be at
Paris that day, and he had made a party with her, and two or three
more of the Count's household, upon the boulevards.
Happy people! that once a week at least are sure to lay down all
your cares together, and dance and sing and sport away the weights
of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the
earth.
THE FRAGMENT. PARIS.
La Fleur had left me something to amuse myself with for the day
more than I had bargain'd for, or could have enter'd either into
his head or mine.
He had brought the little print of butter upon a currant leaf: and
as the morning was warm, and he had a good step to bring it, he had
begg'd a sheet of waste paper to put betwixt the currant leaf and
his hand. - As that was plate sufficient, I bade him lay it upon the
table as it was; and as I resolved to stay within all day, I
ordered him to call upon the traiteur, to bespeak my dinner, and
leave me to breakfast by myself.
When I had finished the butter, I threw the currant-leaf out of the
window, and was going to do the same by the waste paper; - but
stopping to read a line first, and that drawing me on to a 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.
[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.
