Лоренс Стерн - A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

The poor notary, just as he was passing by the sentry, instinctively clapp’d 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 ballustrade clear into the Seine. -

- ’ Tis an ill wind , said a boatman, who catched it, which blows nobody any good .

The sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently twirled up his whiskers, and levell’d his arquebuss.

Arquebusses 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 borrow’d 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 fauxbourgs 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 levell’d 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 despoil’d of my castor by pontific ones! - to be here, bareheaded, 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 of 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 call’d out to a girl, to bid her run for the next notary. - Now the notary being the next, and availing himself of his situation, walk’d up the passage to the door, and passing through an old sort of a saloon, was usher’d into a large chamber, dismantled of everything but a long military pike, - a breastplate, - 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, which I could not die in peace, unless I left it as a legacy to the world: the profits arising out of it I bequeath to you for the pains of taking it 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 dipp’d 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 condemn’d 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-horn - and the old gentleman, turning a little more towards the notary, began to dictate his story in these words: -

- And where is the rest of it, La Fleur? said I, as he just then enter’d the room.

When La Fleur came up close 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.

- How perfidious! cried La Fleur. - 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 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 noonday, 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 just 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.

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 , {2}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, but near the door - ’tis more for ornament than use: you see it as a fixed 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 seem’d to be two upright vestal sisters, unsapped by caresses, unbroke in upon by tender salutations. - I could have wish’d to have made them happy: - their happiness was destin’d that night, to come from another quarter.