WE

PARIS.

E get forwards in the world, not so much by doing services, as receiving them; you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it because you have planted it.

Mons. le Count de B****, merely because he had done me one kindness in the affair of my passport, would go on and do me another, the few days he was at Paris, in making me known to a few people of rank; and they were to present me to others, and so on.

I had got master of my secret just in time to turn these honours to some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should have din'd or supp'd a single time or two round, and then by translating French looks and attitudes into plain English, I should presently have seen, that I had gold out of the couvert of some more entertaining guest; and in course should have resigned all my places one after another, merely upon the principle that I could not keep them-As it was, things did not go much amiss.

*

I had the honour of being introduced to the old Marquis de B****: in days of yore he had signaliz'd himself by some small feats of chivalry in the Cour d'amour, and had dress'd himself out to the idea of tilts aud tournaments ever since the Marquis de B**** wish'd to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain. "He could like to take a trip to England," and ask'd much of the English ladies. Stay where you are, I beseech you, Mons. le Marquis, said I- -Les Messrs Anglois can scarce get a kind look from them as it is- -The Marquis invited me to

supper.

Mons. P**** the farmer-general was just as inquisi

* Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon.

tive about our taxes.-They were very considerable, he heard- -If we knew but how to collect them, said I, making him a low bow.

I could never have been invited to Mons. P****'s

concerts upon any other terms.

I had been misrepresented to Madame de Q*** as an esprit- -Madame de Q*** was an esprit herself: she burnt with impatience to see me, and hear me talk. I had not taken my seat, before I saw she did not care a sous whether I had any wit or no-I was let in, to be convinced she had.-I call Heaven to witness I never once open'd the door of my lips.

Madame de V*** vow'd to every creature she met, "She had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her life."

There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman-She is coquette-then deist then devote: the empire during these is never lost- -she only changes her subjects: when thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominions of the slaves of love, she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity—and then with the slaves of the church.

Madame de V*** was vibrating betwixt the first of these epochas: the colour of the rose was fading fast away she ought to have been a deist five years before the time I had the honour to pay my first visit.

She placed me upon the same sopha with her, for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely -In short Madame de V*** told me she believed nothing.

I told Madame de V*** it might be her principle; but I was sure it could not be her interest to level the outworks, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as her's could be defended-that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist-that it was a debt I owed my

creed, not to conceal it from her-that I had not been five minutes sat upon the sopha beside her, but I had begun to form designs-and what is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had excited in her breast, which could have check'd them as they rose up?

We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand-and there is need of all restraints, till age in her own time steals in and lays them on us-but, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand'tis too

soon

-too

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de V***. -She affirmed to Mons. D*** and the Abbe M***, that in one half-hour I had said more for revealed religion than all their Encyclopedia had said against it—I was lifted directly into Madame de V***'s Coterie—and she put off the epocha of deism for two years.

I remember it was in this Coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was shewing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room to tell solitaire was pinn'd too strait about my neck -It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down upon his own-but a word, Mons. Yorick, to

me my

the wise

And from the wise, Mons. le Count, replied I, making him a bow-is enough.

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

For three weeks together, I was of every man's opinion I met. -Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres.- -Il raisonne bien, said another -C'est un bon enfant, said a third,-And at

this price I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest

reckoning-I grew ashamed of it.It was the gain, of a slave-every sentiment of honour revolted against it- -the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system the better the Coterie-the more children of Art languish'd for those of Nature; and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick-went to bedorder'd La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

I

MARIA.

MOULINES.

NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now-to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France-in the hey-day of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up a journey through each step of which Music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters-to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me—and every one of them was pregnant with adventures.

Just Heaven!-it would fill up twenty volumesand alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into-and half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria my friend Mr Shandy met with near Moulines.

The story he had told of that disorder'd maid affected me not a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strong into my mind, that I could not resist an

impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to enquire after her.

'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy adventures-but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.

The old mother came to the door, her looks told me the story before she open'd her mouth-She had lost her husband; he had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's senses, about a month before. -She had feared at first, she added, that it would have plunder'd her poor girl of what little understanding was leftbut, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself-still she could not rest -her poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road

-Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seem'd only to be tuned to joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it? I beckoned to the postillion to turn back into the road.

When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar- -she was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand- -a small brook

ran at the foot of the tree.

I bid the postillion go on with the chaise to Moulines —and La Fleur to bespeak my supper-and that I

would walk after him.

She was dress'd in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net.- -She had, superadded likewise to her jacket, a pale green ribband,