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 Égarements 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!