Or the proposition may stand thus:
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 damn’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 glass, 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 pawn’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 IX]
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 classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.——
—A slut! 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.——