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away.

Mon Dieu! said La Fleur,-and took

In an hour's time he came to put me to bed, and was more than commonly officious. Some

Now shall I triumph over this mâitre d'hôtel, cried I;-and what then? Then shall I let him see I know he is a dirty fellow.-And what then? What then!-I was too near myself to say it was for the sake of others.--I had nothing hung upon his lips to say to me, or ask me, good answer left;-there was more of spleen than of principle in my project, and I was sick of it before the execution.

In a few minutes the grisette came in with her box of lace.I'll buy nothing, however, said I, within myself.

The grisette would show me everything.-I was hard to please: she would not seem to see it. She opened her little magazine, and laid all her laces, one after another, before me ;-un- | folded and folded them up again, one by one, with the most patient sweetness.-I might buy--or not; she would let me have everything at my own price. The poor creature seemed anxious to get a penny; and laid herself out to win me, and not so much in a manner which seemed artful, as in one I felt simple and caressing.

If there is not a fund of honest cullibility in man, so much the worse;-my heart relented, and I gave up my second resolution as quietly as the first.-Why should I chastise one for the trespass of another? If thou art tributary to this tyrant of a host, thought I, looking up in her face, so much harder is thy bread.

If I had not had more than four louis d'ors in my purse, there was no such thing as rising up and showing her the door till I had first laid three of them out in a pair of ruffles.

-The master of the hotel will share the profit with her :-no matter,-then I have only paid, as many a poor soul has paid before me, for an act he could not do, or think of.

THE RIDDLE.

CALAIS.

WHEN La Fleur came up to wait upon me at supper, he told me how sorry the master of the hotel was for his affront to me in bidding me change my lodgings.

A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it. So I bid La Fleur tell the master of the hotel that I was sorry, on my side, for the occasion I had given him ;—and you may tell him, if you will, La Fleur, added I, that if the young woman should call again, I shall not see her.

This was a sacrifice not to him, but myself, having resolved, after so narrow an escape, to run no more risks, but to leave Paris, if it was possible, with all the virtue I entered it.

C'est deroger à noblèsse, monsieur, said La Fleur, making me a bow down to the ground as he said it.—Et encore, monsieur, said he, may change his sentiments;-and if (par hazard) he should like to amuse himself— . . . I find no amusement in it, said I, interrupting him.

which he could not get off: I could not conceive what it was; and indeed gave myself little trouble to find it out, as I had another riddle so much more interesting upon my mind, which was that of the man's asking charity before the door of the hotel. -I would have given anything to have got to the bottom of it; and that not out of curiosity, 'tis so low a principle of inquiry, in general, I would not purchase the gratification of it with a two-sous piece; but a secret, I thought, which so soon and so certainly softened the heart of every woman you came near, was a secret at least equal to the philosopher's stone; had I had both the Indies, I would have given up one to have been master of it.

I tossed and turned it almost all night long in my brains, to no manner of purpose; and, when I awoke in the morning, I found my spirits as much troubled with my dreams as ever the King of Babylon had been with his; and I will not hesitate to affirm it would have puzzled all the wise men of Paris, as much as those of Chaldca, to have given its interpretation.

LE DIMANCHE,

PARIS.

Ir was Sunday: and when La Fleur came in, in the morning, with my coffee and roll and butter, he had got himself so gallantly arrayed I scarce knew him.

I had covenanted at Montriul to give him a new hat with a silver button and loop, and four louis d'ors pour s'adoniser, when we got to Paris; and the poor fellow, to do him justice, had done wonders with it.

He had bought a bright, clean, good scarlet coat, and a pair of breeches of the same.They were not a crown worse, he said, for the wearing.-I wished him hanged for telling me.

They looked so fresh, that though I knew the thing could not be done, yet I would rather have imposed upon my fancy with thinking I had bought them new for the fellow than that they had come out of the Rue de Friperie.

This is a nicety which makes not the heart sore at Paris.

He had purchased, moreover, a handsome blue satin waistcoat, fancifully enough embroidered. This was indeed something the worse for the service it had done; but 'twas clean scoured,the gold had been touched up, and, upon the whole, was rather showy than otherwise ;—and as the blue was not violent, it suited with the coat and breeches very well. He had squeezed out of the money, moreover, a new bag and a

solitaire; and had insisted with the fripier upon a gold pair of garters to his breeches knees.-He had purchased muslin ruffles bien brodées, with four livres of his own money, and a pair of white silk stockings for five more ;-and, to top all, Nature had given him a handsome figure, without costing him a sous.

He entered the room thus set off, with his hair drest in the first style, and with a handsome bouquet in his breast. In a word, there was that look of festivity in everything about him, which 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 everybody 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 vis-à-vis de sa 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.

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 suficient, 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' 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 anything 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

Behold-Behold, I am the servant, - disarms again;-and after two or three hours' poring

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 picked up in so little a time at Paris? -La Fleur laid his hand upon his breast, and said 'twas a petite demoiselle at Monsieur le Count 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, somehow or other-but how, Heaven knows— he had connected himself with the demoiselle upon the landing of the staircase, 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 his. The 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 dauce and sing, and sport away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth.

upon 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 English, 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 two, and 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 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 which ever were built, the whole world who have passed over the Pont Neuf must own that it is the noblest-the finest -the grandest-the lightest-the longest-the broadest that ever conjoined land and land together upon the face of the terraqueous globe.

By this it seems as if the author of the Fragment had not been a Frenchman. The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against it is, that if there is but a capful of wind in or about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu'd there than in any other aperture of the whole city,-and with reason, good and cogent, messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde d'eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth.

The poor notary, just as he was passing by the sentry, instinctively clapped his cane to the side of it; but, in raising it up, the point of his cane, catching hold of the loop of the sentinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the balustrade clear into the Seine.

despoiled of my castor by pontific ones!—to be here, bare-headed, in a windy night, at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of accidents !Where am I to lay my head?-Miserable man! what wind in the two-and-thirty points in the whole compass can blow unto thee, as it does to the rest of thy fellow-creatures, good!

As the notary was passing on by a dark passage, complaining in this sort, a voice called out to a girl, to bid her run for the next notary. Now the notary being the next, availing himself of his situation, walked up the passage to the door, and, passing through an old sort of saloon, was ushered into a large chamber, dismantled of everything but a long military pike, a breast-plate, a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung up equidistant in four different places against the wall.

An old personage, who had heretofore been a gentleman, and, unless decay of fortune taints the blood along with it, was a gentleman at that time, lay supporting his head upon his hand, in his bed; a little table with a taper burning was set close beside it, and close by the table was placed a chair :-the notary sat him down in it; and, pulling out his inkhorn and a sheet or two of paper which he had in his pocket, he placed them before him, and, dipping his pen in his ink, and leaning his breast over the table, he disposed everything to make the gentleman's last will and testament.

... Alas! Monsieur le Notaire, said the gentleman, raising himself up a little, I have nothing to bequeath, which will pay the expense of bequeathing, except the history of myself, and I could not die in peace unless I left it as a legacy to the world; the profits arising out of

Tis an ill wind, said a boatman who it I bequeath to you for the pains of taking it catched it, which blows nobody any good.

The sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently twirled up his whiskers and levelled his arquebuse.

Arquebuses in those days went off with matches; and an old woman's paper lantern at the end of the bridge happening to be blown out, she had borrowed the sentry's match to light it. It gave a moment's time for the Gascon's blood to run cool, and turn the accident better to his advantage.-'Tis an ill wind, said he, catching off the notary's castor, and legitimating the capture with the boatman's adage.

The poor notary crossed the bridge, and, passing along the Rue de Dauphine into the Fauxbourg of St. Germain, lamented himself as he walked along in this manner :

Luckless man that I am! said the notary, to be the sport of hurricanes all my days!-to be born to have the storm of ill language levelled against me and my profession wherever I go !to be forced into marriage by the thunder of the church to a tempest of a woman!-to be driven forth out of my house by domestic winds, and

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from me. It is a story so uncommon, it must be read by all mankind;-it will make the fortunes of your house. The notary dipped his pen into his inkhorn. . . . Almighty Director of every event in my life! said the old gentleman, looking up earnestly, and raising his hands towards heaven,-Thou whose hand has led me on through such a labyrinth of strange passages down into this scene of desolation, assist the decaying memory of an old, infirm, and broken-hearted man!-Direct my tongue by the spirit of thy eternal truth, that this stranger may set down nought but what is written in that Book from whose records, said he, clasping his hands together, I am to be condemned or acquitted!The notary held up the point of his pen betwixt the taper and his

eye.

... It is a story, Monsieur le Notaire, said the gentleman, which will rouse up every affection in nature;-it will kill the humane, and touch the heart of Cruelty herself with pity.

The notary was inflamed with a desire to begin, and put his pen a third time into his ink

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There is a long dark passage issuing out from the Opera Comique into a narrow street; 'tis trod by a few who humbly wait for a fiacre,' or wish to get off quietly o'foot when the opera is done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, 'tis lighted by a small candle, the light of which is almost lost before you get half-way down;

THE FRAGMENT, AND THE BOUQUET.' but near the door, 'tis more for ornament than

PARIS.

WHEN La Fleur came close up to the table, and was made to comprehend what I wanted, he told me there were only two other sheets of it, which he had wrapped round the stalks of a bouquet to keep it together, which he had presented to the demoiselle upon the Boulevards.... Then prithee, La Fleur, said I, step back to her, to the Count de B****'s hotel, and see if thou canst get it. . . . There is no doubt of it, said La Fleur;-and away he flew.

In a very little time the poor fellow came back, quite out of breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks than could arise from the simple irreparability of the fragment. Juste Ciel in less than two minutes that the poor fellow had taken his last tender farewell of her, his faithless mistress had given his gage d'amour to one of the Count's footmen-the footman to a young sempstress-and the sempstress to a fiddler, with my fragment at the end of it. Our misfortunes were involved together. -I gave a sigh, and La Fleur echoed it back again to my ear.

use; you see it as a fix'd star of the least magnitude; it burns,-but does little good to the world, that we know of.

In returning along this passage, I discerned, as I approached within five or six paces of the door, two ladies standing, arm in arm, with their backs against the wall, waiting, as I imagined, for a fiacre. As they were next the door, I thought they had a prior right; so edged myself up within a yard or little more of them, and quietly took my stand.—I was in black, and

scarce seen.

The lady next me was a tall lean figure of a woman, of about thirty-six; the other, of the same size and make, of about forty: there was no mark of wife or widow in any one part of either of them ;-they seemed to be two upright vestal sisters, unsapped by caresses, unbroke in upon by tender salutations. I could have wished to have made them happy;-their happiness was destined, that night, to come from another quarter.

A low voice, with a good turn of expression, and sweet cadence at the end of it, begged for a twelve-sous piece betwixt them, for the love How perfidious! cried La Fleur. . . . of Heaven. I thought it singular that a beggar How unlucky! said I.

...

I should not have been mortified, monsieur, quoth La Fleur, if she had lost it. ... Nor I, La Fleur, said I, had I found it. Whether I did or no, will be seen hereafter.

THE ACT OF CHARITY.

PARIS.

THE man who either disdains or fears to walk up a dark entry may be an excellent good man, and fit for a hundred things; but he will not do to make a good Sentimental Traveller. I count little of the many things I see pass at broad noon-day, in large and open streets.-Nature is shy, and hates to act before spectators; but in such an unobserved corner you sometimes see a single short scene of hers worth all the sentiments of a dozen French plays compounded together; and yet they are absolutely fine ;-and whenever I have a more brilliant affair upon my hands than common, as they suit a preacher quite as well as a hero, I generally make my sermon out of 'em; and for the text-'Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,' is as good as any one in the Bible.

1 Nosegay.

should fix the quota of an alms,-and that the sum should be twelve times as much as what is usually given in the dark. They both seemed astonished at it as much as myself. . . . Twelve sous! said one. . . . A twelve-sous piece! said the other, and made no reply.

-The poor man said he knew not how to ask less of ladies of their rank; and bow'd down his head to the ground.

Poo! said they,-we have no money. The beggar remained silent for a moment or two, and renewed his supplication.

Do not, my fair young ladies, said he, stop your good ears against me. . . . Upon my word, honest man! said the younger, we have no change. . . . Then God bless you! said the poor man, and multiply those joys which you can give to others without change!-I observed the eldest sister put her hand into her pocket. I'll see, said she, if I have a sous ! A sous! give twelve, said the supplicant; Nature has been bountiful to you! be bountiful to a poor man.

...

I would, friend, with all my heart, said the younger, if I had it.

My fair charitable! said he, addressing himself to the elder,-what is it but your good

1 Hackney-coach.

ness and humanity which makes your bright eyes so sweet that they outshine the morning, even in this dark passage? and what was it which made the Marquis de Santerre and his brother say so much of you both as they just passed by?

The two ladies seemed much affected; and impulsively, at the same time, they both put their hands into their pockets, and each took out a twelve-sous piece.

The contest between them and the poor supplicant was no more,--it was continued betwixt themselves which of the two should give the twelve-sous piece in charity;-and, to end the dispute, they both gave it together, and the man went away.

THE RIDDLE EXPLAINED.

PARIS.

I STEPPED hastily after him: it was the very man whose success in asking charity of the women before the door of the hotel had so puzzled me; and I found at once his secret, or at least the basis of it;-'twas flattery.

Delicious essence! how refreshing art thou to Nature! how strongly are all its powers and all its weaknesses on thy side! how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart! The poor man, as he was not straitened for time, had given it here in a larger dose: 'tis certain he had a way of bringing it into less form, for the many sudden cases he had to do with in the streets; but how he contrived to correct, sweeten, concentre, and qualify it,-I vex not my spirit with the inquiry;-it is enough, the beggar gained two twelve-sous pieces, and they can best tell the rest who have gained much greater matters by it.

PARIS.

WE 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 the 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.

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 signalized himself by some small feats of chivalry in the Cour d'Amour, and had dressed himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since. The Marquis de B**** wished to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain. He could like to take a trip to England;' and asked much of the English ladies. Stay where you are, I beseech you, Mons. le Marquis, said I.—Les Messieurs Anglois can scarce get kind look from them as it is.-The Marquis invited me to supper.

...

Mons. P****, the farmer-general, was just as inquisitive 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 opened the door of my lips.

Madame de V*** vowed 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 dévote. 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 re-peoples it with the 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 sofa 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 hers could be defended; that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist;

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 dined or supped a single time or two round; and then, by translating French looks and atti-that it was a debt I owed my creed not to contudes into plain English, I should presently have seen that I had got hold of the couvert1 of some

Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon.

ceal it from her- that I had not been five minutes upon the sofa beside her, before I had begun to form designs ;-and what is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they

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