Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

past it, give yourself the trouble to turn directly to the right, and that will lead you to the foot of the Pont Neuf, which you must cross-and there any one will do himself the pleasure to show you.

She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with the same good-natured patience the third time as the first; and if tones and manners have a meaning, which certainly they have, unless to hearts which shut them out, she seemed really interested that I should not lose myself.

I will not suppose it was the woman's beauty, notwithstanding she was the handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which had much to do with the sense I had of her courtesy; only I remember, when I told her how much I was obliged to her, that I looked very full in her eyes, and that I repeated my thanks as often as she had done her instructions.

I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I had forgot every tittle of what she had said :— -SO looking back, and seeing her still standing in the door of the shop, as if to look whether I went right or not, -I returned back, to ask her whether the first turn was to my right or left, for that I had absolutely forgot.

Is it possible? said she, half laughing. 'Tis very possible, replied I, when a man is thinking more of a woman than of her good advice.

As this was the real truth, she took it, as every woman takes a matter of right, with a slight curtesy.

Attendez, said she, laying her hand upon my arm to detain me, whilst she called a lad out of the back shop to get ready a parcel of gloves. I am just

going to send him, said she, with a packet into that quarter; and if you will have the complaisance to step in, it will be ready in a moment, and he shall attend you to the place. So I walked in with her to the far side of the shop; and taking up the ruffle in my hand which she laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit, she sat down herself in her low chair, and I instantly sat myself down beside her.

He will be ready, Monsieur, said she, in a moment.

-And in that moment, replied I, most willingly would I say something very civil to you for all these courtesies. Any one may do a casual act of good nature, but a continuation of them shows it is a part of the temperature; and, certainly, added I, if it is the same blood which comes from the heart, which descends to the extremes (touching her wrist) I am sure you must have one of the best pulses of any woman in the world. Feel it, said she, holding out her arm. So laying down my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the two forefingers of my other to the artery.

Would to Heaven! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lackadaisical manner, counting the throbs of it, one by one, with as much true devotion as if I had been watching the critical ebb or flow of her fever! How wouldst thou have laughed and moralized upon my new profession!-and thou shouldst have laughed and moralized on.-Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I should have said, "there are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse."—But a grisette's!

thou wouldst have said, and in an open shop, Yorick!

-So much the better: for when my views are direct, Eugenius, I care not if all the world saw me feel it.

THE HUSBAND.

PARIS.

I HAD counted twenty pulsations, and was going on fast towards the fortieth, when her husband coming unexpected from a back-parlour into the shop, put me a little out in my reckoning.-'Twas nobody but her husband, she said-so I began a fresh score.Monsieur is so good, quoth she, as he passed by us, as to give himself the trouble of feeling my pulse.The husband took off his hat, and making me a bow, said, I did him too much honour; and having said that, he put on his hat and walked out.

Good God! said I to myself, as he went out,—and can this man be the husband of this woman?

Let it not torment the few who know what must have been the grounds of this exclamation, if I explain it to those who do not.

In London, a shopkeeper and a shopkeeper's wife seem to be one bone and one flesh. In the several endowments of mind and body, sometimes the one, sometimes the other has it, so as in general to be upon a par, and to tally with each other as nearly as man and wife need to do.

In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more different; for the legislative and executive powers of

[graphic][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« ZurückWeiter »