The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [141]
Yorick, I said, picked up the chesnut which Phutatorius’s wrath had flung down—the action was trifling—I am ashamed to account for it—he did it, for no reason, but that he thought the chesnut not a jot worse for the adventure—and that he held a good chesnut worth stooping for.—But this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in Phutatorius’s head: He considered this act of Yorick’s, in getting off his chair, and picking up the chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in him, that the chesnut was originally his,—and in course, that it must have been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have plaid him such a prank with it: What greatly confirmed him in this opinion, was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for Yorick, who sat directly over-against Phutatorius, of slipping the chesnut in—and consequently that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion, which Phutatorius cast full upon Yorick as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke his opinion—and as Phutatorius was naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general one;—and for a reason very different from any which have been yet given—in a little time it was put out of all manner of dispute.
When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world—the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight, behind the scenes, to see what is the cause and first spring of them—The search was not long in this instance.
It was well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of the treatise which Phutatorius had wrote de Concubinis retinendis, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world—and ’twas easily found out, that there was a mystical meaning in Yorick’s prank—and that his chucking the chesnut hot into Phutatorius’s ***—*****,13 was a sarcastical fling at his book—the doctrines of which, they said, had inflamed many an honest man in the same place.
This conceit awaken’d Somnolentus—made Agelastes smile—and if you can recollect the precise look and air of a man’s face intent in finding out a riddle—it threw Gastripheres’s into that form—and in short was thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit.
This, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as groundless as the dreams of philosophy: Yorick, no doubt, as Shakespear said of his ancestor—“was a man of jest,”14 but it was temper’d with something which withheld him from that, and many other ungracious pranks, of which he as undeservedly bore the blame;—but it was his misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying and doing a thousand things of which (unless my esteem blinds me) his nature was incapable. All I blame him for—or rather, all I blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of his temper, which would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the world, however in his power. In every ill usage of that sort, he acted precisely as in the affair of his lean horse—he could have explained it to his honour, but his spirit was above it; and besides he ever looked upon the inventor, the propagator and believer of an illiberal report alike so injurious to him,—he could not stoop to tell his story to them—and so trusted to time and truth to do it for him.
This heroic cast produced him inconveniences in many respects—in the present, it was followed by the fixed resentment of Phutatorius, who, as Yorick had just made an end of his chesnut, rose up from his chair a second time, to let him know it—which indeed he did with a smile; saying only—that he would endeavour not to forget the obligation.
But you must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these two things in your mind.
—The smile was for the company.
—The threat was for Yorick.
CHAP. XXVIII
—Can you tell me, quoth Phutatorius, speaking to Gastripheres who sat next to