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—The Lady Baussiere rode on.17

Pity the unhappy, said a devout, venerable, hoary-headed man, meekly holding up a box, begirt with iron, in his withered hands——I beg for the unfortunate—good, my lady, ’tis for a prison—for an hospital—’tis for an old man—a poor man undone by shipwreck, by suretyship, by fire——I call God and all his angels to witness—’tis to cloath the naked—to feed the hungry—’tis to comfort the sick and the broken hearted.

—The Lady Baussiere rode on.

A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground.

—The Lady Baussiere rode on.

He ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfry, conjuring her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c.—Cousin, aunt, sister, mother—for virtue’s sake, for your own, for mine, for Christ’s sake remember me—pity me.

—The Lady Baussiere rode on.

Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady Baussiere——The page took hold of her palfry. She dismounted at the end of the terrace.

There are some trains of certain ideas which leave prints of themselves about our eyes and eye-brows; and there is a consciousness of it, somewhere about the heart, which serves but to make these etchings the stronger—we see, spell, and put them together without a dictionary.

Ha, ha! hee, hee! cried La Guyol and La Sabatiere, looking close at each others prints——Ho, ho! cried La Battarelle and Maronette, doing the same:—Whist! cried one—st, st,—said a second,—hush, quoth a third——poo, poo, replied a fourth—gramercy! cried the Lady Carnavallette;—’twas she who bewhisker’d St. Bridget.

La Fosseuse drew her bodkin from the knot of her hair, and having traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt end of it, upon one side of her upper lip, put it into La Rebours’s hand—La Rebours shook her head.

The Lady Baussiere cough’d thrice into the inside of her muff—La Guyol smiled—Fy, said the Lady Baussiere. The queen of Navarre touched her eye with the tip of her fore finger—as much as to say, I understand you all.

’twas plain to the whole court the word was ruined: La Fosseuse had given it a wound, and it was not the better for passing through all these defiles——It made a faint stand, however, for a few months; by the expiration of which, the Sieur de Croix, finding it high time to leave Navarre for want of whiskers—the word in course became indecent, and (after a few efforts) absolutely unfit for use.

The best word, in the best language of the best world, must have suffered under such combinations.—The curate of d’Estella18 wrote a book against them, setting forth the dangers of accessory ideas, and warning the Navarois against them.

Does not all the world know, said the curate d’Estella at the conclusion of his work, that Noses ran the same fate some centuries ago in most parts of Europe, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom of Navarre—The evil indeed spread no further then—, but have not beds and bolsters, and night-caps and chamber-pots19 stood upon the brink of destruction ever since? Are not trouse,20 and placket-holes, and pump-handles—and spigots and faucets, in danger still, from the same association?—Chastity, by nature the gentlest of all affections—give it but its head—’tis like a ramping and a roaring lion.21

The drift of the curate d’Estella’s argument was not understood.—They ran the scent the wrong way.—The world bridled his ass at the tail.—And when the extreams of DELICACY, and the beginnings of CONCUPISCENCE, hold their next provincial chapter together, they may decree that bawdy also.

CHAP. II

When my father received the letter which brought him the melancholy account of my brother Bobby’s death, he was busy calculating the expence of his riding post from Calais to Paris, and so on to Lyons.

’twas a most inauspicious journey; my father having had every foot of it to travel over again, and his calculation to begin afresh, when he had almost got to the end of it, by Obadiah’s opening the door to acquaint him the family was out of yeast—and to ask whether he might not take the great coach-horse