The sempstress to a fiddler, with my fragment at
the end of it. - Our misfortunes were involved together: - I gave a
sigh, - and La Fleur echoed it back again to my ear.
- How perfidious! cried La Fleur. - How unlucky! said I.
- I should not have been mortified, Monsieur, quoth La Fleur, if
she had lost it. - Nor I, La Fleur, said I, had I found it.
Whether I did or no will be seen hereafter.
THE ACT OF CHARITY. PARIS.
The man who either disdains or fears to walk up a dark entry may be
an excellent good man, and fit for a hundred things, but he will
not do to make a good Sentimental Traveller. - I count little of the
many things I see pass at broad noonday, in large and open
streets. - Nature is shy, and hates to act before spectators; but in
such an unobserved corner you sometimes see a single short scene of
hers worth all the sentiments of a dozen French plays compounded
together, - and yet they are absolutely fine; - and whenever I have a
more brilliant affair upon my hands than common, as they suit a
preacher just as well as a hero, I generally make my sermon out of
'em; - and for the text, - "Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and
Pamphylia," - is as good as any one in the Bible.
There is a long dark passage issuing out from the Opera Comique
into a narrow street; 'tis trod by a few who humbly wait for a
fiacre, {2} or wish to get off quietly o'foot when the opera is
done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, 'tis lighted by a
small candle, the light of which is almost lost before you get
half-way down, but near the door - 'tis more for ornament than use:
you see it as a fixed star of the least magnitude; it burns, - but
does little good to the world, that we know of.
In returning along this passage, I discerned, as I approached
within five or six paces of the door, two ladies standing arm-in-
arm with their backs against the wall, waiting, as I imagined, for
a fiacre; - as they were next the door, I thought they had a prior
right; so edged myself up within a yard or little more of them, and
quietly took my stand. - I was in black, and scarce seen.
The lady next me was a tall lean figure of a woman, of about
thirty-six; the other of the same size and make, of about forty:
there was no mark of wife or widow in any one part of either of
them; - they seem'd to be two upright vestal sisters, unsapped by
caresses, unbroke in upon by tender salutations.
