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.
