Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

of a better order of beings however, I thought no more of her, but went on and wrote my preface.

The impreffion returned, upon my encounter with her in the street; a guarded frankness with which she gave me her hand, shewed, I thought, her good education and her good sense; and as I led her on, I felt a pleasurable ductility about her, which spread a calmness over all my fpirits

-Good God! how a man might lead fuch a creature as this round the world with him!

[ocr errors]

I had not yet seen her face-'twas not material; for the drawing was instantly fet about, and long before we had got to the door of the Remife, Fancy had

finish'd the whole head, and pleased herself as much with its fitting her goddess, as if she had dived into the TIBER for it-but thou art a seduced, and a feducing flut; and albeit thou cheatest us seven times a day with thy pictures and images, yet with so many charms dost thou do it, and thoti deckest out thy pictures in the shapes of so many angels of light, 'tis a shame to break with thee.

felf

When we had got to the door of the Remise, she withdrew her hand from across her forehead, and let me fee the original-it was a face of about fix and twenty-of a clear transparent brown, fimply set off without rouge or powder -it was not critically handsome, but there was that in it, which in the frame of mind I was in, which attached me much more to it-It was interesting; I fancied it wore the characters of a wiclenfion, which had passed the two first paroxyfms of forrow, and was quietly beginning to reconcile itself to its lossbut a thousand other distresses might have traced the same lines; I wish'd to know what they had been-and was ready to enquire, (had the same bon ton of conversation permitted, as in the days of Efdras)"what aileth thee? and why art thou difquieted? and why is thy understanding troubled?" In a word, I felt benevolence for her; and refolved some way or other to throw in my mite of courtesyif not of service.

dow'd look, and in that state of its deC4

clenfion,

Such were my temptations and in this disposition to give way to them, was I left alone with the lady with her hand in inine, and with our faces both turned closer to the door of the Remise than what was abfolutely necessary.

:

I

THE REMISE DOOR.

CALAIS.

THIS certainly, fair lady! said I, rail

ing her hand up a little lightly as I began, muft be one of Fortune's whimfical doings: to take two utter strangers by their hands of different sexes, and per haps from different corners of the globe, and in one moment place them together in fuch a cordial situation, as Friendship herself could searce have atchieved for them, had the projected it for a month

--And your reflection upon it, shews how much, Monfieur, she has embarrassed you by the adventure.

When

When the fituation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it fo: you thank Fortune, continued she-you had reason the heart knew it, and was fatisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have fent notices of it to the brain to reverse the judginent?

In saying this, she disengaged her hand with a look which I thought a sufficient commentary upon the text.

It is a miferable picture which I am going to give of the weakness of my heart, by owning, that it fuffered a pain, which worthier occafions could not have inflicted. I was mortified with the lofs of her hand, and the manner in which I had loft it carried neither oil nor wine to the wound: I never felt the pain of a sheepish inferiority so miferably in my life,

The

« ZurückWeiter »