The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 48

A French postilion has always to alight before he has got three hundred yards out of town.

What's wrong now?-Diable!-a rope's broke!-a knot has slipt!-a staple's drawn!-a bolt's to whittle!-a tag, a rag, a jag, a strap, a buckle, or a buckle's tongue, want altering.

Now true as all this is, I never think myself impowered to excommunicate thereupon either the post-chaise, or its driver-nor do I take it into my head to swear by the living G.., I would rather go a-foot ten thousand times-or that I will be d.a.m.n'd, if ever I get into another-but I take the matter coolly before me, and consider, that some tag, or rag, or jag, or bolt, or buckle, or buckle's tongue, will ever be a wanting or want altering, travel where I will-so I never chaff, but take the good and the bad as they fall in my road, and get on:-Do so, my lad! said I; he had lost five minutes already, in alighting in order to get at a luncheon of black bread, which he had cramm'd into the chaise-pocket, and was remounted, and going leisurely on, to relish it the better.-Get on, my lad, said I, briskly-but in the most persuasive tone imaginable, for I jingled a four-and-twenty sous piece against the gla.s.s, taking care to hold the flat side towards him, as he look'd back: the dog grinn'd intelligence from his right ear to his left, and behind his sooty muzzle discovered such a pearly row of teeth, that Sovereignty would have p.a.w.n'd her jewels for them.

Just heaven! What masticators!-/What bread-!

and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of Montreuil.

Chapter 3.XCII.

There is not a town in all France which, in my opinion, looks better in the map, than Montreuil;-I own, it does not look so well in the book of post-roads; but when you come to see it-to be sure it looks most pitifully.

There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that is, the inn-keeper's daughter: She has been eighteen months at Amiens, and six at Paris, in going through her cla.s.ses; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.-

-A s.l.u.t! in running them over within these five minutes that I have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread stocking-yes, yes-I see, you cunning gipsy!-'tis long and taper-you need not pin it to your knee-and that 'tis your own-and fits you exactly.-

-That Nature should have told this creature a word about a statue's thumb!

-But as this sample is worth all their thumbs-besides, I have her thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to me,-and as Janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing-may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,-if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.-

-But your wors.h.i.+ps chuse rather that I give you the length, breadth, and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the facade of the abbey of Saint Austreberte which has been transported from Artois. .h.i.ther-every thing is just I suppose as the masons and carpenters left them,-and if the belief in Christ continues so long, will be so these fifty years to come-so your wors.h.i.+ps and reverences may all measure them at your leisures-but he who measures thee, Janatone, must do it now-thou carriest the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are pa.s.sed and gone, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes-or thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty-nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy-and lose thyself.-I would not answer for my aunt Dinah, was she alive-'faith, scarce for her picture-were it but painted by Reynolds-

But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of Apollo, I'll be shot-

So you must e'en be content with the original; which, if the evening is fine in pa.s.sing thro' Montreuil, you will see at your chaise-door, as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have-you had better stop:-She has a little of the devote: but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour- -L... help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil.

Chapter 3.XCIII.

All which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much nearer me than I imagined-I wish I was at Abbeville, quoth I, were it only to see how they card and spin-so off we set.

(Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762.) de Montreuil a Nampont- poste et demi de Nampont a Bernay -- poste de Bernay a Nouvion -- poste de Nouvion a Abbeville poste -but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.

Chapter 3.XCIV.

What a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter.

Chapter 3.XCV.

Was I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster-I should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house-but rather in some decent inn-at home, I know it,-the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention-but mark. This inn should not be the inn at Abbeville-if there was not another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so

Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning-Yes, by four, Sir,-or by Genevieve! I'll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.

Chapter 3.XCVI.

'Make them like unto a wheel,' is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop Hall, 'tis one of the severest imprecations which David ever utter'd against the enemies of the Lord-and, as if he had said, 'I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.'-So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)-is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same a.n.a.logy, is so much of heaven.

Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy-and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil-

Hollo! Ho!-the whole world's asleep!-bring out the horses-grease the wheels-tie on the mail-and drive a nail into that moulding-I'll not lose a moment-

Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto, for that would make an Ixion's wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop's habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in Palestine at that time or not-and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country.

I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their '(Greek)'-(their) 'getting out of the body, in order to think well.' No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre-Reason is, half of it, Sense; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appet.i.tes and concoctions.-

-But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong?

You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early.

Chapter 3.XCVII.

-But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my beard till I got to Paris;-yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing;-'tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which Lessius (lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.) hath made his estimate, wherein he setteth forth, That one Dutch mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great a number of souls (counting from the fall of Adam) as can possibly be d.a.m.n'd to the end of the world.

From what he has made this second estimate-unless from the parental goodness of G.o.d-I don't know-I am much more at a loss what could be in Franciscus Ribbera's head, who pretends that no less a s.p.a.ce than one of two hundred Italian miles multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to hold the like number-he certainly must have gone upon some of the old Roman souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a gradual and most tabid decline, in the course of eighteen hundred years, they must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have come, when he wrote, almost to nothing.

In Lessius's time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can be imagined-

-We find them less now-

And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on from little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not one moment to affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall have no souls at all; which being the period beyond which I doubt likewise of the existence of the Christian faith, 'twill be one advantage that both of 'em will be exactly worn out together.

Blessed Jupiter! and blessed every other heathen G.o.d and G.o.ddess! for now ye will all come into play again, and with Priapus at your tails-what jovial times!-but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I rus.h.i.+ng? I-I who must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste no more of 'em than what I borrow from my imagination-peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on.