The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [213]
Heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to delegate to the inn at the bottom of the hill? was there no generous and friendly spirit unemploy’d——no agent in nature, by some monitory shivering, creeping along the artery which led to his heart, to rouze the muleteer from his banquet?——no sweet minstrelsy to bring back the fair idea of the abbess and Margarita, with their black rosaries!
Rouse! rouse!——but ’tis too late—the horrid words are pronounced this moment——
——and how to tell them—Ye, who can speak of every thing existing, with unpolluted lips——instruct me——guide me——
CHAP. XXV
All sins whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being the slightest and least of all sins,—being halved—by taking, either only the half of it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, and amicably halving it betwixt yourself and another person—in course becomes diluted into no sin1 at all.
Now I see no sin in saying, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, a hundred times together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing the syllable ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, were it from our matins to our vespers: Therefore, my dear daughter, continued the abbess of Andoüillets—I will say bou, and thou shalt say ger; and then alternately, as there is no more sin in fou than in bou—Thou shalt say fou—and I will come in (like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, at our complines)2 with ter. And accordingly the abbess, giving the pitch note, set off thus:
Abbess,
Margarita,
Bou--bou--bou--
——ger,--ger,--ger
Margarita,
Abbess,
Fou--fou--fou--
——ter,--ter,--ter.
The two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; but it went no further.——’twill answer by an’ by, said the novice.
Abbess,
Margarita,
Bou- bou- bou- bou- bou- bou-
—ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger.
Quicker still, cried Margarita.
Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou.
Quicker still, cried Margarita.
Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou.
Quicker still—God preserve me! said the abbess—They do not understand us, cried Margarita—But the Devil does, said the abbess of Andoüillets.
CHAP. XXVI
What a tract of country have I run!—how many degrees nearer to the warm sun am I advanced, and how many fair and goodly cities have I seen, during the time you have been reading, and reflecting, Madam, upon this story! There’s FONTAINBLEAU, and SENS, and JOIGNY, and AUXERRE, and DIJON the capital of Burgundy, and CHALLON, and Mâcon the capital of the Mâconese, and a score more upon the road to LYONS——and now I have run them over——I might as well talk to you of so many market-towns in the moon, as tell you one word about them: it will be this chapter at the least, if not both this and the next entirely lost, do what I will——
—Why, ’tis a strange story! Tristram.
———Alas! Madam, had it been upon some melancholy lecture of the cross—the peace of meekness, or the contentment of resignation——I had not been incommoded: or had I thought of writing it upon the purer abstractions of the soul, and that food of wisdom, and holiness, and contemplation, upon which the spirit of man (when separated from the body) is to subsist for ever——You would have come with a better appetite from it——
——I wish I never had wrote it: but as I never blot any thing out——let us use some honest means to get it out of our heads directly.
——Pray reach me my fool’s cap——I fear you sit upon it, Madam——’tis under the cushion——I’ll put it on——
Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——There then let it stay, with a
Fa-ra diddle di
and a fa-ri diddle d
and a high-dum—dye-dum
fiddle—dumb - c.1
And now, Madam, we may venture, I hope, a little to go on.
CHAP. XXVII
——All you need say of Fontainbleau