re-enter, and gently ask me what injury he had done me?-and why I could use him thus? I would have given twenty livres for an advocate. I have behaved very ill, said I, within myself; but I have only just set out upon my travels, and shall learn better manners as I get along. WHEN a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage, however, that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain. Now, there being no travelling through France and Italy without a chaise, and Nature generally prompting us to the thing we are fittest for, I walked out into the coach-yard to buy or hire something of that kind to my purpose: an old désobligeant, in the furthest corner of the court, hit my fancy at first sight; so I instantly got into it, and * A chaise so called in France, from its holding but one person. finding it in tolerable harmony with my feelings, I ordered the waiter to call Monsieur Dessein, the master of the hotel; but Monsieur Dessein being gone to vespers, and not caring to face the Franciscan, whom I saw on the opposite side of the court, in conference with a lady just arrived at the inn, I drew the taffeta curtain betwixt us, and, being determined to write my journey, I took out my pen and ink, and wrote the preface to it in the désobligeant. It must have been observed, by many a peripatetic philosopher, that Nature has set up, by her own unquestionable authority, certain boundaries and fences to circumscribe the discontent of man; she has effected her purpose in the quietest and easiest manner, by laying him under almost insuperable obligations to work out his ease, and to sustain his sufferings at home. It is there only that she has provided him with the most suitable objects to partake of his happiness, and bear a part of that burden which, in all |