A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy Part 13

My fair charitable! said he, addressing himself to the elder,--what is it but your goodness and humanity which makes your bright eyes so sweet, that they outshine the morning even in this dark pa.s.sage?

and what was it which made the Marquis de Santerre and his brother say so much of you both as they just pa.s.sed by?

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

The contest betwixt 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 pa.s.sages to the heart!

The poor man, as he was not straiten'd for time, had given it here in a larger dose: 'tis certain he had a way of bringing it into a 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 enquiry;--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.

Monsieur le Count de B-, merely because he had done me one kindness in the affair of my pa.s.sport, 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.

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 supp'd a single time or two round, and then, by TRANSLATING French looks and att.i.tudes into plain English, I should presently have seen, that I had hold of the couvert {3} of some 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 dress'd himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since.--The Marquis de B- wish'd 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, Monsieur le Marquis, said I.--Les Messieurs Anglois can scarce get a kind look from them as it is.--The Marquis invited me to supper.

Monsieur 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- vow'd 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 devote: the empire during these is never lost,--she only changes her subjects when thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love, she re- peoples it with slaves of infidelity,--and then with the slaves of the church.

Madame de V- was vibrating betwixt the first of those 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;--that it was a debt I owed my creed not to conceal it from her;--that I had not been five minutes sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had begun to form designs;--and what is it, but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had excited in her breast, which could have check'd them as they rose up?

We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand;--and there is need of all restraints, till age in her own time steals in and lays them on us.--But my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand,--'tis too- -too soon.

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de V-.--She affirmed to Monsieur D- and the Abbe M-, that in one half hour I had said more for revealed religion, than all their Encyclopaedia had said against it.--I was listed directly into Madame de V-'s coterie;--and she put off the epocha of deism for two years.

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a FIRST cause, when the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was pinn'd too straight about my neck.--It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down upon his own;--but a word, Monsieur Yorick, TO THE WISE -

And FROM THE WISE, Monsieur le Count, replied I, making him a bow,- -IS ENOUGH.

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

For three weeks together I was of every man's opinion I met.-- Pardi! ce Monsieur Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres.--Il raisonne bien, said another.--C'est un bon enfant, said a third.-- And at this price I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest RECKONING;--I grew ashamed of it.--It was the gain of a slave;--every sentiment of honour revolted against it;--the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my BEGGARLY SYSTEM;--the better the coterie,--the more children of Art;--I languish'd for those of Nature: and one night, after a most vile prost.i.tution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick,--went to bed;--order'd La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

MARIA. MOULINES.

I never felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now,--to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France,--in the heyday of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up,--a journey, through each step of which Music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their cl.u.s.ters: to pa.s.s through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me,--and every one of them was pregnant with adventures. -

Just heaven!--it would fill up twenty volumes;--and alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into,--and half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria my friend, Mr. Shandy, met with near Moulines.

The story he had told of that disordered maid affected me not a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strong into the mind, that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to enquire after her.

'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance in quest of melancholy adventures. But I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.

The old mother came to the door; her looks told me the story before she open'd her mouth.--She had lost her husband; he had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's senses, about a month before.--She had feared at first, she added, that it would have plunder'd her poor girl of what little understanding was left;-- but, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself: --still, she could not rest.--Her poor daughter, she said, crying, was wandering somewhere about the road.

Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seem'd only to be tuned to joy, to pa.s.s the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it?

I beckoned to the postilion to turn back into the road.

When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar. She was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand: --a small brook ran at the foot of the tree.

I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines--and La Fleur to bespeak my supper;--and that I would walk after him.

She was dress'd in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net.--She had superadded likewise to her jacket, a pale green riband, which fell across her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe.--Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle: as I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string.--"Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio," said she. I look'd in Maria's eyes and saw she was thinking more of her father than of her lover, or her little goat; for, as she utter'd them, the tears trickled down her cheeks.

I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away as they fell, with my handkerchief.--I then steep'd it in my own,--and then in hers,--and then in mine,--and then I wip'd hers again;--and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion.

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester'd the world ever convince me to the contrary.

MARIA.

When Maria had come a little to herself, I ask'd her if she remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said she was unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts: - -that ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat him for the theft;--she had wash'd it, she said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine leaves, tied round with a tendril;--on opening it, I saw an S. marked in one of the corners.

She had since that, she told me, stray'd as far as Rome, and walk'd round St. Peter's once,--and return'd back;--that she found her way alone across the Apennines;--had travell'd over all Lombardy, without money,--and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes: --how she had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could not tell;--but G.o.d TEMPERS THE WIND, said Maria, TO THE SHORN LAMB.

Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said I: and wast thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter thee: thou shouldst eat of my own bread and drink of my own cup;-- I would be kind to thy Sylvio;--in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I would seek after thee and bring thee back;--when the sun went down I would say my prayers: and when I had done thou shouldst play thy evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a broken heart!

Nature melted within me, as I utter'd this; and Maria observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steep'd too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the stream.--And where will you dry it, Maria? said I.--I'll dry it in my bosom, said she: -- 'twill do me good.

And is your heart still so warm, Maria? said I.

I touch'd upon the string on which hung all her sorrows: --she look'd with wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying any thing, took her pipe and play'd her service to the Virgin.--The string I had touched ceased to vibrate;--in a moment or two Maria returned to herself,--let her pipe fall,--and rose up.

And where are you going, Maria? said I.--She said, to Moulines.-- Let us go, said I, together.--Maria put her arm within mine, and lengthening the string, to let the dog follow,--in that order we enter'd Moulines.