and as I refolved to stay within all day, I ordered him to call upon the traiteur to befpeak my dinner, and leave me to breakfast by myself.

When I had finifh'd the butter, I threw the currant leaf out of the window, and was going to do the fame by the wafte paper-but ftopping to read a line first, and that drawing me on to a fecond and third-I thought it better worth; fo I fhut the window, and drawing a chair up to it, I fat down to read it.

It was in the old French of Rabelais's time, and for ought I know might have been wrote by him-it was. moreover in a Gothic letter, and that

VOL. II.

K

fo

fo faded and gone off by damps and length of time, it coft me infinite trouble to make any thing of itI threw it down; and then wrote a letter to Eugenius-then I took it up again, and embroiled my patience with it afresh-and then to cure that, I wrote a letter to Eliza.-Still it kept hold of me; and the difficulty of understanding it increafed but the defire.

I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with a bottle of Burgundy, I at it again-and after two or three hours poring upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon did upon a nonfenfical infcription, I thought I made

made fenfe of it; but to make fure of it, the best way, I imagined, was to turn it into English, and fee how it would look then-fo I went on leifurely, as a trifling man does, fometimes writing a sentence-then taking a turn or two-and then looking how the world went, out of the window fo that it was nine o'clock at night before I had done it-I then begun and read it as follows.

4

THE FRAGMENT.

P. ARI S.

Now as the notary's wife difputed the point with the notary with too much heat-I wish, said the notary (throwing down the parchment) that there was another notary here only to fet down and attest all this

-And what would you do then, Monfieur? faid fhe, rifing haftily upthe notary's wife was a little fume of a woman, and the notary thought it

well

well to avoid a hurricane by a mild reply-I would go, anfwer'd he, to bed. You may go to the devil, answer'd the notary's wife.

Now there happening to be but one bed in the house, the other two rooms being unfurnifh'd, as is the custom at Paris, and the notary not caring to lie in the fame bed with a woman who had but that moment fent him pell-mell to the devil, went forth with his hat and cane and short cloak, the night being very windy, and walk'd out ill at ease towards the Pont Neuf.

Of all the bridges which ever were built, the whole world who have