C’est tout egal—’tis all one; said he.
Bon Dieu! what, pay for the way I go! and for the way I do not go!
——C’est tout egal; replied the commissary——
——The devil it is! said I—but I will go to ten thousand Bastiles first——
O England! England! thou land of liberty, and climate of good sense, thou tenderest of mothers—and gentlest of nurses, cried I, kneeling upon one knee, as I was beginning my apostrophe.
When the director of Madam Le Blanc’s conscience coming in at that instant, and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at his devotions—looking still paler by the contrast and distress of his drapery—ask’d, if I stood in want of the aids of the church——
I go by WATER—said I—and here’s another will be for making me pay for going by OIL.
[ CHAPTER XXXV]
As I perceived the commissary of the post-office would have his six livres four sous, I had nothing else for it, but to say some smart thing upon the occasion, worth the money:
And so I set off thus:——