I AM apt to be taken with all kinds of people at first sight; but never more so than when a poor devil comes to offer his service. to so poor a devil as myself; and, as I know this weakness, I always suffer my judgment to draw back so...ething on that very account-and this, more or less, according to the mood I am in, and the case; and, I may add, the gender, too, of the person I am to govern. When La Fleur entered the room, after every discount I could make for my soul, the genuine look and air of the fellow determined the matter at once in his favour; so I hired him first, -and then began to inquire what he could do.-But I shall find out his talents, quoth I, as I want them;-besides, a Frenchman can do everything. Now poor La Fleur could do nothing but beat a drum, and play a march or two upon the fife. I was determined to make his talents do and can't say my weakness was ever so insulted by my wisdom as in the attempt. : La Fleur had set out early in life, as gallantly as most Frenchmen do, with serving for a few years: at the end of which, having satisfied the sentiment, and found, moreover, that the honour of beating a drum was likely to be its own reward, as it opened no further track of glory to him, he retired à ses terres, and lived comme il plaisoit à Dieu;-that is to say, upon nothing. And So, quoth Wisdom, you have hired a drummer to attend you, in this tour of yours through France and Italy! Psha! said 1, and do not one half of our gentry go with a humdrum compagnon de voyage the same round, and have the piper and the Devil and all to pay besides? When a man can extricate himself with an équivoque in such an unequal match,—he is not ill off. ———But you can do something else, La Fleur? said 1Oh qu'oui! he could make spatterdashes, and could play a little upon the fiddle.- -Bravo! said Wisdom. Why I play a bass myself, said I;—we shall do very well. You can shave, and dress a wig a little, La Fleur?—He had all the dispositions in the world.—It is enough for Heaven, said I. inter rupting him, and ought to be enough for me.-So supper coming in, and having a frisky English spaniel on one side of my chair, and a French valet, with as much hilarity in his countenance as ever Nature painted in one, on the otherwas satisfied to my heart's content with my empire; and if monarchs knew what they would be at, they might be as satisfied as I was As La Fleur went the whole tour of France and Italy with me, and will be often upon the stage, I must interest the reader a little further in his behalf, by saying that I had never less reason to repent of the impulses which generally do determine.me than in regard to this fellow; he was a faithful, affectionate, simple soul as ever trudged after the heels of a philosopher; and. notwithstanding his talents of drum-beating and spatterdash-making, which, though very good in themselves, happened to be of no great service to me, yet was hourly recompensed by the festivity of his temper; - supplied all defects:-I had a constant resource in his looks in all difficulties and distresses of my own- -(I was going to have added, of his too); but La Fleur was out of the reach of everything; for whether it was hunger or thirst, or cold or nakedness, or watchings, or whatever stripes of ill luck La Fleur met with in our journeyings, there was no index in his physiognomy to point them out by,—he was eternally the same; so, if I am a pie of a philosopher, which Satan now and then puts it into my head I am,-it always mortifies the pride of the conceit, by reflecting how much I owe to the complexional philosophy of this poor fellow, for shaming me into one of a better kind. With all this, La Fleur had a small cast of the coxcomb;-but he seemed, at first sight, to be more a coxcomb of nature than of art; and, before I had been three days in Paris with him, he seemed to be no coxcomb at 'all. PHILOSOPHIA FIDELITAS |