A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

THE ROSE

It was now my turn to ask the old French officer “What was the matter?” for a cry of “Haussez les mains, Monsieur l’Abbé!” re-echoed from a dozen different parts of the parterre, was as unintelligible to me, as my apostrophe to the monk had been to him.

He told me it was some poor Abbé in one of the upper loges, who, he supposed, had got planted perdu behind a couple of grisettes in order to see the opera, and that the parterre espying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands during the representation.—And can it be supposed, said I, that an ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes’ pockets?  The old French officer smiled, and whispering in my ear, opened a door of knowledge which I had no idea of.

Good God! said I, turning pale with astonishment—is it possible, that a people so smit with sentiment should at the same time be so unclean, and so unlike themselves,—Quelle grossièrté! added I.

The French officer told me, it was an illiberal sarcasm at the church, which had begun in the theatre about the time the Tartuffe was given in it by Molière: but like other remains of Gothic manners, was declining.—Every nation, continued he, have their refinements and grossièrtés, in which they take the lead, and lose it of one another by turns:—that he had been in most countries, but never in one where he found not some delicacies, which others seemed to want.  Le POUR et le CONTRE se trouvent en chaque nation; there is a balance, said he, of good and bad everywhere; and nothing but the knowing it is so, can emancipate one half of the world from the prepossession which it holds against the other:—that the advantage of travel, as it regarded the sçavoir vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow, taught us mutual love.

The old French officer delivered this with an air of such candour and good sense, as coincided with my first favourable impressions of his character:—I thought I loved the man; but I fear I mistook the object;—’twas my own way of thinking—the difference was, I could not have expressed it half so well.

It is alike troublesome to both the rider and his beast,—if the latter goes pricking up his ears, and starting all the way at every object which he never saw before.—I have as little torment of this kind as any creature alive; and yet I honestly confess, that many a thing gave me pain, and that I blush’d at many a word the first month,—which I found inconsequent and perfectly innocent the second.

Madame do Rambouliet, after an acquaintance of about six weeks with her, had done me the honour to take me in her coach about two leagues out of town.—Of all women, Madame de Rambouliet is the most correct; and I never wish to see one of more virtues and purity of heart.—In our return back, Madame de Rambouliet desired me to pull the cord.—I asked her if she wanted anything—Rien que pour pisser, said Madame de Rambouliet.

Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet p—ss on.—And, ye fair mystic nymphs! go each one pluck your rose, and scatter them in your path,—for Madame de Rambouliet did no more.—I handed Madame de Rambouliet out of the coach; and had I been the priest of the chaste Castalia, I could not have served at her fountain with a more respectful decorum.

THE FILLE DE CHAMBRE

What the old French officer had delivered upon travelling, bringing Polonius’s advice to his son upon the same subject into my head,—and that bringing in Hamlet, and Hamlet the rest of Shakespeare’s works, I stopp’d at the Quai de Conti in my return home, to purchase the whole set.

The bookseller said he had not a set in the world.  Comment! said I, taking one up out of a set which lay upon the counter betwixt us.—He said they were sent him only to be got bound, and were to be sent back to Versailles in the morning to the Count de B—.

–And does the Count de B—, said I, read Shakespeare?  C’est un esprit fort, replied the bookseller.—He loves English books! and what is more to his honour, Monsieur, he loves the English too.  You speak this so civilly, said I, that it is enough to oblige an Englishman to lay out a louis d’or or two at your shop.—The bookseller made a bow, and was going to say something, when a young decent girl about twenty, who by her air and dress seemed to be fille de chambre to some devout woman of fashion, come into the shop and asked for Les Egarements du Cœur et de l’Esprit: the bookseller gave her the book directly; she pulled out a little green satin purse run round with a riband of the same colour, and putting her finger and thumb into it, she took out the money and paid for it.  As I had nothing more to stay me in the shop, we both walk’d out at the door together.

–And what have you to do, my dear, said I, with The Wanderings of the Heart, who scarce know yet you have one? nor, till love has first told you it, or some faithless shepherd has made it ache, canst thou ever be sure it is so.—Le Dieu m’en garde! said the girl.—With reason, said I, for if it is a good one, ’tis pity it should be stolen; ’tis a little treasure to thee, and gives a better air to your face, than if it was dress’d out with pearls.

The young girl listened with a submissive attention, holding her satin purse by its riband in her hand all the time.—’Tis a very small one, said I, taking hold of the bottom of it—she held it towards me—and there is very little in it, my dear, said I; but be but as good as thou art handsome, and heaven will fill it.  I had a parcel of crowns in my hand to pay for Shakespeare; and, as she had let go the purse entirely, I put a single one in; and, tying up the riband in a bow-knot, returned it to her.

The young girl made me more a humble courtesy than a low one:—’twas one of those quiet, thankful sinkings, where the spirit bows itself down,—the body does no more than tell it.  I never gave a girl a crown in my life which gave me half the pleasure.

My advice, my dear, would not have been worth a pin to you, said I, if I had not given this along with it: but now, when you see the crown, you’ll remember it;—so don’t, my dear, lay it out in ribands.

Upon my word, Sir, said the girl, earnestly, I am incapable;—in saying which, as is usual in little bargains of honour, she gave me her hand:—En vérité, Monsieur, je mettrai cet argent àpart, said she.

When a virtuous convention is made betwixt man and woman, it sanctifies their most private walks: so, notwithstanding it was dusky, yet as both our roads lay the same way, we made no scruple of walking along the Quai de Conti together.

She made me a second courtesy in setting off, and before we got twenty yards from the door, as if she had not done enough before, she made a sort of a little stop to tell me again—she thank’d me.

It was a small tribute, I told her, which I could not avoid paying to virtue, and would not be mistaken in the person I had been rendering it to for the world;—but I see innocence, my dear, in your face,—and foul befall the man who ever lays a snare in its way!

The girl seem’d affected some way or other with what I said;—she gave a low sigh:—I found I was not empowered to enquire at all after it,—so said nothing more till I got to the corner of the Rue de Nevers, where, we were to part.

–But is this the way, my dear, said I, to the Hotel de Modene?  She told me it was;—or that I might go by the Rue de Gueneguault, which was the next turn.—Then I’ll go, my dear, by the Rue de Gueneguault, said I, for two reasons; first, I shall please myself, and next, I shall give you the protection of my company as far on your way as I can.  The girl was sensible I was civil—and said, she wished the Hotel de Modene was in the Rue de St. Pierre.—You live there? said I.—She told me she was fille de chambre to Madame R—.—Good God! said I, ’tis the very lady for whom I have brought a letter from Amiens.—The girl told me that Madame R—, she believed, expected a stranger with a letter, and was impatient to see him:—so I desired the girl to present my compliments to Madame R—, and say, I would certainly wait upon her in the morning.

We stood still at the corner of the Rue de Nevers whilst this pass’d.—We then stopped a moment whilst she disposed of her Egarements du Cœur, &c. more commodiously than carrying them in her hand—they were two volumes: so I held the second for her whilst she put the first into her pocket; and then she held her pocket, and I put in the other after it.

’Tis sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.

We set off afresh, and as she took her third step, the girl put her hand within my arm.—I was just bidding her,—but she did it of herself, with that undeliberating simplicity, which show’d it was out of her head that she had never seen me before.  For my own part, I felt the conviction of consanguinity so strongly, that I could not help turning half round to look in her face, and see if I could trace out any thing in it of a family likeness.—Tut! said I, are we not all relations?

When we arrived at the turning up of the Rue de Gueneguault, I stopp’d to bid her adieu for good and all: the girl would thank me again for my company and kindness.—She bid me adieu twice.—I repeated it as often; and so cordial was the parting between us, that had it happened any where else, I’m not sure but I should have signed it with a kiss of charity, as warm and holy as an apostle.

But in Paris, as none kiss each other but the men,—I did, what amounted to the same thing—

–I bid God bless her.

THE PASSPORT

When I got home to my hotel, La Fleur told me I had been enquired after by the Lieutenant de Police.—The deuce take it! said I,—I know the reason.  It is time the reader should know it, for in the order of things in which it happened, it was omitted: not that it was out of my head; but that had I told it then it might have been forgotten now;—and now is the time I want it.

I had left London with so much precipitation, that it never enter’d my mind that we were at war with France; and had reached Dover, and looked through my glass at the hills beyond Boulogne, before the idea presented itself; and with this in its train, that there was no getting there without a passport.  Go but to the end of a street, I have a mortal aversion for returning back no wiser than I set out; and as this was one of the greatest efforts I had ever made for knowledge, I could less bear the thoughts of it: so hearing the Count de—had hired the packet, I begg’d he would take me in his suite.  The Count had some little knowledge of me, so made little or no difficulty,—only said, his inclination to serve me could reach no farther than Calais, as he was to return by way of Brussels to Paris; however, when I had once pass’d there, I might get to Paris without interruption; but that in Paris I must make friends and shift for myself.—Let me get to Paris, Monsieur le Count, said I,—and I shall do very well.  So I embark’d, and never thought more of the matter.

When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant de Police had been enquiring after me,—the thing instantly recurred;—and by the time La Fleur had well told me, the master of the hotel came into my room to tell me the same thing, with this addition to it, that my passport had been particularly asked after: the master of the hotel concluded with saying, He hoped I had one.—Not I, faith! said I.

The master of the hotel retired three steps from me, as from an infected person, as I declared this;—and poor La Fleur advanced three steps towards me, and with that sort of movement which a good soul makes to succour a distress’d one:—the fellow won my heart by it; and from that single trait I knew his character as perfectly, and could rely upon it as firmly, as if he had served me with fidelity for seven years.

Mon seigneur! cried the master of the hotel; but recollecting himself as he made the exclamation, he instantly changed the tone of it.—If Monsieur, said he, has not a passport (apparemment) in all likelihood he has friends in Paris who can procure him one.—Not that I know of, quoth I, with an air of indifference.—Then certes, replied he, you’ll be sent to the Bastile or the Chatelet au moins.—Poo! said I, the King of France is a good natur’d soul:—he’ll hurt nobody.—Cela n’empêche pas, said he—you will certainly be sent to the Bastile to-morrow morning.—But I’ve taken your lodgings for a month, answer’d I, and I’ll not quit them a day before the time for all the kings of France in the world.  La Fleur whispered in my ear, That nobody could oppose the king of France.

Pardi! said my host, ces Messieurs Anglois sont des gens très extraordinaires;—and, having both said and sworn it,—he went out.

THE PASSPORT

I could not find in my heart to torture La Fleur’s with a serious look upon the subject of my embarrassment, which was the reason I had treated it so cavalierly: and to show him how light it lay upon my mind, I dropt the subject entirely; and whilst he waited upon me at supper, talk’d to him with more than usual gaiety about Paris, and of the Opéra Comique.—La Fleur had been there himself, and had followed me through the streets as far as the bookseller’s shop; but seeing me come out with the young fille de chambre, and that we walk’d down the Quai de Conti together, La Fleur deem’d it unnecessary to follow me a step further;—so making his own reflections upon it, he took a shorter cut,—and got to the hotel in time to be inform’d of the affair of the police against my arrival.

As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone down to sup himself, I then began to think a little seriously about my situation.—

–And here, I know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the remembrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us the moment I was going to set out:—I must tell it here.

Eugenius, knowing that I was as little subject to be overburden’d with money as thought, had drawn me aside to interrogate me how much I had taken care for.  Upon telling him the exact sum, Eugenius shook his head, and said it would not do; so pull’d out his purse in order to empty it into mine.—I’ve enough in conscience, Eugenius, said I.—Indeed, Yorick, you have not, replied Eugenius; I know France and Italy better than you.—But you don’t consider, Eugenius, said I, refusing his offer, that before I have been three days in Paris, I shall take care to say or do something or other for which I shall get clapp’d up into the Bastile, and that I shall live there a couple of months entirely at the king of France’s expense.—I beg pardon, said Eugenius drily: really I had forgot that resource.

Now the event I treated gaily came seriously to my door.

Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity—or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius?

–And as for the Bastile; the terror is in the word.—Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a tower;—and a tower is but another word for a house you can’t get out of.—Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year.—But with nine livres a day, and pen and ink, and paper, and patience, albeit a man can’t get out, he may do very well within,—at least for a mouth or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the court-yard, as I settled this account; and remember I walk’d down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning.—Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I, vauntingly—for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring.  The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them.—’Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition,—the Bastile is not an evil to be despised;—but strip it of its towers—fill up the fosse,—unbarricade the doors—call it simply a confinement, and suppose ’tis some tyrant of a distemper—and not of a man, which holds you in it,—the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint.

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained “it could not get out.”—I look’d up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without farther attention.

In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and, looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage.—“I can’t get out,—I can’t get out,” said the starling.

I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach’d it, with the same lamentation of its captivity.  “I can’t get out,” said the starling.—God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get to the door: it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces.—I took both hands to it.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis pressed his breast against it as if impatient.—I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at liberty.—“No,” said the starling,– “I can’t get out—I can’t get out,” said the starling.

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly call’d home.  Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I,—still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.—’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change.—No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron:—with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled!—Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion,—and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them!

THE CAPTIVE

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room; I sat down close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement.  I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery: but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me.—

–I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then look’d through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half-wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferr’d.  Upon looking nearer I saw him pale and feverish: in thirty years the western breeze had not once fann’d his blood;—he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time—nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice.—His children—

But here my heart began to bleed—and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the furthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed: a little calendar of small sticks were laid at the head, notch’d all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there;—he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and, with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap.  As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down,—shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction.  I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle.—He gave a deep sigh.—I saw the iron enter into his soul!—I burst into tears.—I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.—I started up from my chair, and calling La Fleur: I bid him bespeak me a remise, and have it ready at the door of the hotel by nine in the morning.