Previous - Next

if the reader can form any conjecture of my disposition, as these
two fixed points are given him, he may judge within a livre or two
what was the precise sum.

I could afford nothing for the rest, but Dieu vous benisse!

- Et le bon Dieu vous benisse encore, said the old soldier, the
dwarf, &c. The pauvre honteux could say nothing;--he pull'd out a
little handkerchief, and wiped his face as he turned away--and I
thought he thanked me more than them all.


THE BIDET.


Having settled all these little matters, I got into my post-chaise
with more ease than ever I got into a post-chaise in my life; and
La Fleur having got one large jack-boot on the far side of a little
bidet, and another on this (for I count nothing of his legs)--he
canter'd away before me as happy and as perpendicular as a prince.-
-But what is happiness! what is grandeur in this painted scene of
life! A dead ass, before we had got a league, put a sudden stop to
La Fleur's career;--his bidet would not pass by it,--a contention
arose betwixt them, and the poor fellow was kick'd out of his jack-
boots the very first kick.

La Fleur bore his fall like a French Christian, saying neither more
nor less upon it, than Diable! So presently got up, and came to
the charge again astride his bidet, beating him up to it as he
would have beat his drum.

The bidet flew from one side of the road to the other, then back
again,--then this way, then that way, and in short, every way but
by the dead ass: --La Fleur insisted upon the thing--and the bidet
threw him.

What's the matter, La Fleur, said I, with this bidet of thine?
Monsieur, said he, c'est un cheval le plus opiniatre du monde.--
Nay, if he is a conceited beast, he must go his own way, replied I.
So La Fleur got off him, and giving him a good sound lash, the
bidet took me at my word, and away he scampered back to Montreuil.-
-Peste! said La Fleur.

It is not mal-a-propos to take notice here, that though La Fleur
availed himself but of two different terms of exclamation in this
encounter,--namely, Diable! and Peste! that there are,
nevertheless, three in the French language: like the positive,
comparative, and superlative, one or the other of which serves for
every unexpected throw of the dice in life.

Le Diable! which is the first, and positive degree, is generally
used upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only
fall out contrary to your expectations; such as--the throwing once
doublets--La Fleur's being kick'd off his horse, and so forth.--
Cuckoldom, for the same reason, is always--Le Diable!

But, in cases where the cast has something provoking in it, as in
that of the bidet's running away after, and leaving La Fleur
aground in jack-boots,--'tis the second degree.

'Tis then Peste!

And for the third -

- But here my heart is wrung with pity and fellow feeling, when I

Previous - Next