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at once put me in mind it was Sunday-and by combining both together, it instantly struck me, that the favour he wished to ask of me the night before, was to spend the day as every body in Paris spent it besides. I had scarce made the conjecture, when La Fleur, with infinite humility, but with a look of trust as if I should not refuse him, begged I would grant him the day, pour faire le gallant visà-vis de se maîtresse.

Now it was the very thing I intended to do myself vis-à vis Madame de R****_

-I had retained the remise on purpose for it, and it would not have mortified my vanity to have had a servant so well dressed as La Fleur was, to have got up behind it: I never could have worse spared him.

But we must feel, not argue in these embarrassments the sons and daughters of service part with liberty, but not with nature, in their contracts; -they are flesh and blood, and have their little vanities and wishes in the midst of the house of bondage, as well as their task-masters-no doubt, they have set their self-denials at a price-and their expectations are so unreasonable, that I would often disappoint them, but that their condition puts it so much in my power to do it.

Behold!

Behold! Behold! I am thy fervant-disarms me at once of the powers of a master—

-Thou shalt go, La Fleur! said I.

-And what mistress, La Fleur, said I, canst thou have pick'd up in so little time at Paris?—La Fleur laid his hand upon his breast, and said 'twas a petite demoiselle at Monsieur Le Compte de B****'s-La Fleur had a heart made for society; and, to speak the truth of him, let as few occasions slip him as his master-so that some how or other, but how heaven knows he had connected himself with the demoiselle upon the landing of the stair-case, during the time I was taken up with my Passport; and as there was time enough for me to win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had contrived to make it do to win the maid to histhe family, it seems, was to be at Paris that day, and he had made a party with her, and two or three more of the Count's household, upon the boulevards.

Happy people! that once a week at least are sure to lay down all your cares together; and dance and sing and sport away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth.

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THE FRAGMENT.

PARIS.

LA Fleur had left me something to amuse

myself with for the day more than I had bargained for, or could have entered either into his head or mine.

He had brought the little print of butter upon a currant leaf; and as the morning was warm, and he had a good step to bring it, he had begged a sheet of waste paper to put betwixt the currant leaf and his hand-As that was plate sufficient, I bade him lay it upon the table as it was; and as I resolved to stay within all day, I ordered him to call upon the traiteur to bespeak my dinner, and leave me to breakfast by myself.

When I had finished the butter, I threw the currant leaf out of the window, and was going to do the same by the waste paper-but stopping to read a line first, and that drawing me on to a second and third-I thought it better worth; so I shut the window, and drawing a chair up to it, I sat down to read it.

It was in the old French of Rabelais's time, and for aught I know might have been wrote by him-it was moreover in a Gothic letter, and that so faded and gone off by damps and length of time, it cost me infinite trouble to make any thing of it

I 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 increased but the desire.

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 over it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon did upon a nonsensical inscription, I thought I made sense of it; but to make sure of it, the best way, I imagined, was to turn it into Eng lish, and see how it would look then-so I went on leisurely, as a trifling man does, sometimes writing a sentence-then taking a turn or twoand then looking how the world went, out of the window; so that it was nine o'clock at night before I had done it-I then began, and read it as follows

THE

THE FRAGMENT.

PARIS.

-Now as the notary's wife disputed 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 set down and attest all this

And what would you do then, Monsieur ? said she, rising hastily up-the notary's wife was a little fume of a woman, and the notary thought it well to avoid a hurricane by a mild reply-I would go, answered he, to bed-You may go to the devil, answered the notary's wife.

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

Of all the bridges that ever were built, the whole world, who have passed over the Pont Neuf, must own, that it is the noblest—the finest—the

grandest

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