It must needs be a hostile kind of
a world, when the buyer (if it be but of a sorry post-chaise)
cannot go forth with the seller thereof into the street to
terminate the difference betwixt them, but he instantly falls into
the same frame of mind, and views his conventionist with the same
sort of eye, as if he was going along with him to Hyde-park
corner to fight a duel. For my own part, being but a poor
swordsman, and no way a match for Monsieur Dessein, I felt the
rotation of all the movements within me, to which the situation
is incident;—I looked at Monsieur Dessein through and
through—eyed him as he walk’d along in
profile,—then, en face;—thought like a
Jew,—then a Turk,—disliked his wig,—cursed him
by my gods,—wished him at the devil.—
—And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a
beggarly account of three or four louis d’ors, which is the
most I can be overreached in?—Base passion! said I, turning
myself about, as a man naturally does upon a sudden reverse of
sentiment,—base, ungentle passion! thy hand is against
every man, and every man’s hand against thee.—Heaven
forbid! said she, raising her hand up to her forehead, for I had
turned full in front upon the lady whom I had seen in conference
with the monk:—she had followed us
unperceived.—Heaven forbid, indeed! said I, offering her my
own;—she had a black pair of silk gloves, open only at the
thumb and two fore-fingers, so accepted it without
reserve,—and I led her up to the door of the Remise.
Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key above fifty times
before he had found out he had come with a wrong one in his hand:
we were as impatient as himself to have it opened; and so
attentive to the obstacle that I continued holding her hand
almost without knowing it: so that Monsieur Dessein left us
together with her hand in mine, and with our faces turned towards
the door of the Remise, and said he would be back in five
minutes.
Now a colloquy of five minutes, in such a situation, is worth
one of as many ages, with your faces turned towards the street:
in the latter case, ’tis drawn from the objects and
occurrences without;—when your eyes are fixed upon a dead
blank,—you draw purely from yourselves. A silence of
a single moment upon Mons. Dessein’s leaving us, had been
fatal to the situation—she had infallibly turned
about;—so I begun the conversation instantly.—
—But what were the temptations (as I write not to
apologize for the weaknesses of my heart in this tour,—but
to give an account of them)—shall be described with the
same simplicity with which I felt them.
