when I reflect what miseries must have been their lot, and how bitterly so refined a people must have smarted, to have forced them upon the use of it.

Grant me, O ye powers which touch the tongue with eloquence in distress! whatever is my cast, grant me but decent words to exclaim in, and I will give my nature way.

But as these were not to be had in France, I resolved to take every ill just as it befel me, without any exclamation at all. La Fleur, who had made no such covenant with himself, followed the bidet with his eyes till it was got out of sight; and then, you may imagine, if you please, with what word he closed the whole affair.

As there was no hunting down a frightened horse in jackboots, there remained no alternative but taking La Fleur either behind the chaise or into it,

I preferred the latter; and in half-an-hour we got to the post-house at Nampont.

NAMPONT.

THE DEAD ASS.

"AND this," said he, putting the remains of a crust into his wallet," And this should have been thy portion," said he, "hadst thou been alive to have shared it with me." I thought, by the accent, it had been an apostrophe to his child; but 't was to his ass, and to the very ass we had seen dead in the road, which had occasioned La Fleur's misadventure. The man seemed to lament it much; and it instantly brought into my mind Sancho's lamentation for his; but he did it with more true touches of nature.

The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with the ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time-then laid them down-looked at them, and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time in his hand; then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle, looked wistfully at the little arrangement he had made, and then gave a sigh. The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and La Fleur amongst the rest, whilst the horses were getting ready as I continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over their heads.

He said he had come last from Spain, where he had been from the furthest borders of Franconia; and had got so far on his return home, when his ass died. Every one seemed

desirous to know what business could have taken so old and poor a man so far a journey from his own home.

It had pleased Heaven, he said, to bless him with three sons, the finest lads in all Germany: but having, in one week, lost two of the eldest of them by the small pox, and the youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them all; and made a vow, if Heaven would not take him from him also, he would go in gratitude to St. Iago in Spain.

When the mourner got thus far on his story, he stopped to pay nature his tribute, and wept bitterly.

He said, Heaven had accepted the conditions; and that he had set out from his cottage with this poor creature, which had been a patient partner of his journey; that it had eat the same bread with him all the way, and was unto him as a friend.

Everybody who stood about, heard the poor fellow with concern. La Fleur offered him money. The mourner said he did not want it: it was not the value of the ass, but the loss of him. The ass, he said, he was assured, loved him; and