As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone down to sup himself, I then began to think a little seriously about my situation.

-And here, I know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the remembrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us the moment I was going to set out:-I must tell it here.

Eugenius, knowing that I was as little subject to be overburdened with money as thought, had drawn me aside to

interrogate me how much I had taken care for. Upon telling him the exact sum, Eugenius shook his head, and said it would not do; so pulled out his purse in order to empty it into mine. "I've enough in conscience, Eugenius," said I. "Indeed, Yorick, you have not," replied Eugenius; "I know France and Italy better than you." "But you do n't consider, Eugenius," said I, refusing his offer, "that before I have been three days in Paris, I shall take care to say or do something or other for which I shall get clapped up into the Bastile, and that I shall live there a couple of months entirely at the King of France's expense." "I beg pardon," said Eugenius drily; "really I had forgot that resource."

A

Now the event I treated gaily came seriously to my door.

Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity; or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius.

And as for the Bastile! the terror is in the word. "Make the most of it you can," said I, to myself, "the Bastile is but another word for a tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year. But with nine livres a day, and pen and ink, and paper and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within-at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in."

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the courtyard as I settled this account; and remember I walked down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. "Beshrew the sombre pencil," said I, vauntingly, "for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened; reduce them to their size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true," proper said I, correcting the proposition, "the Bastile is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers-fill up the fosseunbarricade the doors-call it simply a confinement, and suppose 't is some tyrant of a distemper, and not of a man, which holds you in it-the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint.

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without farther attention.

In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage. "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling.

I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who

came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. "I can't get out," said the starling. "God help thee!" said I, "but I'll help thee out, cost what it will;" so I turned about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.