MARIA. ashamed of it-it was the gain of a slave-every sentiment of honour revolted against it-the higher I got, the more was I forced on my beggarly system-the better the coterie-the more children of Art-I languished for those of Nature: and one night, after a most vile prostitu tion of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick went to bed-ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy. MARIA. MOULINES. I NEVER felt what distress of plenty was, in any one shape, till now-to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France-in the hey-day of the vintage, when nature is pour ing her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up-a journey, through each step of which, Music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters to pass through this with my afs fections flying out, and kindling at every group before me and every one of them pregnant with adventures. * Just heaven!~it would fill up twenty volumes and, alas! I have but a few small pages left to crowd it into and half of these must be taken MOULINES. up with the poor Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines The story he had told of that disordered maid, affected me not a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strong into my mind, that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to enquire after her. 'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures-but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them. The old mother came to the door; her looks told me the story before she opened her mouthShe had lost her husband: he had died, she said, of anguish for the loss of Maria's senses, about a month before she had feared, at first, she added, that it would have plundered her poor girl of what little understanding was left-but, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself— still she could not rest-her poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road Why does my pulse beat languid as I write. this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be turned to joy, to pass the back MARIA. of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it? I beckoned to the postillion to turn back into the road. When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria seated under a poplar-she was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand a small brook ran at the foot of the tree. I bid the postillion go on with the chaise to Moulines-and La Fleur to bespeak my supper -and that I would walk after him. She was dressed in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung lose, which before was twisted within a silk net-She had superadded, likewise, to her jacket, a pale green ribband, which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe.Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle. As I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string "Thou shalt not leave me Sylvio," said she.-I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover or her little goat; for as she uttered them the tears trickled down her cheeks. I sat down close by her, and Maria let me MOULINES. wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief-Father steeped it in my own-and then in hers and then in mine-and then I wiped hers again and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion. 1 I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me of the contrary. WHEN Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said she was as unset. tled much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts-that, ill as she was, she was the person pitied her; and, next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beaten him. for the theft she had washed it, she said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to restore to him in case she should ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to let me sec it: she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine leaves, tied MARIA. round with a tendril-on opening it I saw an S marked in one of the corners. bno-end She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome and walked round St. Peter's once and returned back—that she found her way halons across the Appenines - had travelled over all Lombardy without money and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes-how shel had borne it-and how she had got supported, she could not tell-but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb. Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I; and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it and shelter thee thou should'st eat of my own bread, and drink of my own cup-I would be kind to thy Sylvio in all thy weakness and wanderings I would seek after thee, and bring thee back-when the sun went down, I would say my prayers; and, when I had done, thou should'st play thy evening song upon thy pipe; nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering Hea ren along with that of a broken heart. Me, doord Nature melted within me, as I uttered this; and Maria observing, as I took out my handker chief, that it was steeped too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream.te And where will you dry it, Maria? said; I.—In will dry it in my bosom, said she 'twill do me good. |