A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne

Author:Laurence Sterne [Sterne, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Unread
Publisher: Project Gutenberg
Published: 1997-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

THE PASSPORT. THE HOTEL AT PARIS.

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

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