THE ROSE PARIS Ir was now my turn to ask the old French officer, "What was the matter?" for a cry of " Haussez les mains, Monsieur l'Abbé!" re-echoed from a dozen different parts of the parterre, was as unintelligible to me as my apostrophe to the monk had been to him. He told me it was some poor Abbé in one of the upper loges, who he supposed had got planted perdu behind a couple of grisettes, in order to see the opera, and that the parterre, espying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands during the representation-And can it be supposed, said I, that an ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes' pockets?The old French officer smiled, and, whispering in my ear, opened a door of knowledge which I had no idea of. .... Good God, said I, turning pale with astonishment, is it possible that a people so smit with sentiment should at the same time be so unclean, and so unlike themselves?-Quelle grossierté! added I. The French officer told me it was an illiberal sarcasm at the church which had begun in the theatre about the time the Tartuffe was given in it, by Molière-but like other remains of Gothic manners, was declining.-Every nation, continued he, have their refinements and grossiertés, in which they take the lead, and lose it of one another by turns-that he had been in most countries, but never in one where he found not some delicacies, which others. seemed to want. Le pour et le contre se trouvent en chaque nation; there is a balance, said he, of good and bad everywhere; and nothing but the knowing it is so can emancipate one half of the world from the prepossession which it holds against the otherthat the advantage of travel, as it regarded the sçavoir vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow, taught us mutual love. The old French officer delivered this with an air of such candour and good sense as coincided with my first favourable impressions of his character-I thought I loved the man; but I fear I mistook the object-'twas my own way of thinking,-the difference was, I could not have expressed it half so well. It is alike troublesome to both the rider and his THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 237 beast-if the latter goes pricking up his ears, and starting all the way at every object which he never saw before-I have as little torment of this kind as any creature alive; and yet I honestly confess that many a thing gave me pain, and that I blushed at many a word the first month - which I found inconsequent and perfectly innocent the second. Madame de Rambouliet, after an acquaintance of about six weeks with her, had done me the honour to take me in her coach about two leagues out of town. Of all women, Madame de Rambouliet is. the most correct; and I never wish to see one of more virtues and purity of heart. In our return back Madame de Rambouliet desired me to pull the cord-I asked her if she wanted anything-Rien que pisser, said Madame de Rambouliet. Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet p-ss on.-And, ye fair mystic nymphs, go each one pluck your rose, and scatter them in your path,- for Madame de Rambouliet did no more.-I handed Madame de Rambouliet out of the coach; and had I been the priest of the chaste Castalia, I could not have served at her fountain with more respectful decorum, END OF VOL. I. |