Laurence Sterne

“ PARIS.
I stepped hastily after him: it was the very man whose success in asking charity of the women before the door of the hotel had so puzzled me;—and I found at once his secret, or at least the basis of it:—’twas flattery.
Delicious essence! how refreshing art thou to Nature! how strongly are all its powers and all its weaknesses on thy side! how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart! ”

“ The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and passing but few people’s hands, preserve the first sharpnesses which the fine hand of Nature has given them;—they are not so pleasant to feel,—but in return the legend is so visible, that at the first look you see whose image and superscription they bear.—But the French, Monsieur le Count, added I (wishing to soften what I had said) , have so many excellences, they can the better spare this;—they are a loyal, a gallant, a generous, an ingenious, and good temper’d people as is under heaven;—if they have a fault—they are too serious. ”

“ Then do me the favour, I replied, to accept of the box and all, and when you take a pinch out of it, sometimes recollect it was the peace offering of a man who once used you unkindly, but not from his heart.
The poor monk blush’d as red as scarlet. Mon Dieu! said he, pressing his hands together—you never used me unkindly.—I should think, said the lady, he is not likely. I blush’d in my turn; but from what movements, I leave to the few who feel, to analyze.—Excuse me, Madame, replied I,—I treated him most unkindly; and from no provocations.—’Tis impossible, said the lady.—My God! ”

“ The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against it is, that if there is but a capfull of wind in or about Paris, ’tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu’d there than in any other aperture of the whole city,—and with reason good and cogent, Messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde d’eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth. ”

“ A man who values a good night’s rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it.—So I bid La Fleur tell the master of the hotel, that I was sorry on my side for the occasion I had given him;—and you may tell him, if you will, La Fleur, added I, that if the young woman should call again, I shall not see her.
This was a sacrifice not to him, but myself, having resolved, after so narrow an escape, to run no more risks, but to leave Paris, if it was possible, with all the virtue I enter’d it. ”

“ As I had nothing more to stay me in the shop, we both walk’d out at the door together.
—And what have you to do, my dear, said I, with The Wanderings of the Heart, who scarce know yet you have one? nor, till love has first told you it, or some faithless shepherd has made it ache, canst thou ever be sure it is so.—Le Dieu m’en garde! said the girl.—With reason, said I, for if it is a good one, ’tis pity it should be stolen; ’tis a little treasure to thee, and gives a better air to your face, than if it was dress’d out with pearls. ”

“ THE DWARF.
PARIS.
I had never heard the remark made by any one in my life, except by one; and who that was will probably come out in this chapter; so that being pretty much unprepossessed, there must have been grounds for what struck me the moment I cast my eyes over the parterre,—and that was, the unaccountable sport of Nature in forming such numbers of dwarfs.—No doubt she sports at certain times in almost every corner of the world; but in Paris there is no end to her amusements.—The goddess seems almost as merry as she is wise. ”

“ There was nothing from which I had painted out for my self so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the vintage, through this part of France; but pressing through this gate, of sorrow to it, my sufferings have totally unfitted me. In every scene of festivity, I saw Maria in the background of the piece, sitting pensive under her poplar; and I had got almost to Lyons before I was able to cast a shade across her.
—Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! ”

“ There is a long dark passage issuing out from the Opera Comique into a narrow street; ’tis trod by a few who humbly wait for a fiacre, [649] or wish to get off quietly o’foot when the opera is done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, ’tis lighted by a small candle, the light of which is almost lost before you get half-way down, but near the door—’tis more for ornament than use: you see it as a fixed star of the least magnitude; it burns,—but does little good to the world, that we know of. ”

“ In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more different: for the legislative and executive powers of the shop not resting in the husband, he seldom comes there:—in some dark and dismal room behind, he sits commerce-less, in his thrum nightcap, the same rough son of Nature that Nature left him. ”

“ And trust me, Yorick, whenever it is not so, man is false to himself and betrays his own succours ten times where nature does it once. Go to the Duc de C— with the Bastile in thy looks;—my life for it, thou wilt be sent back to Paris in half an hour with an escort.
I believe so, said I.—Then I’ll go to the Duke, by heaven! with all the gaiety and debonairness in the world.—
—And there you are wrong again, replied I.—A heart at ease, Yorick, flies into no extremes—’tis ever on its centre.—Well! well! ”

“ The Count led the discourse: we talk’d of indifferent things,—of books, and politics, and men;—and then of women.—God bless them all! said I, after much discourse about them—there is not a man upon earth who loves them so much as I do: after all the foibles I have seen, and all the satires I have read against them, still I love them; being firmly persuaded that a man, who has not a sort of affection for the whole sex, is incapable of ever loving a single one as he ought. ”

“ Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity—or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius?
—And as for the Bastile; the terror is in the word.—Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a tower;—and a tower is but another word for a house you can’t get out of.—Mercy on the gouty! ”

“ Every man almost spoke pure iambics the next day, and talked of nothing but Perseus his pathetic address,—“O Cupid! prince of gods and men!”—in every street of Abdera, in every house, “O Cupid! Cupid!”—in every mouth, like the natural notes of some sweet melody which drop from it, whether it will or no,—nothing but “Cupid! Cupid! prince of gods and men!”—The fire caught—and the whole city, like the heart of one man, open’d itself to Love. ”

“ The young girl made me more a humble courtesy than a low one:—’twas one of those quiet, thankful sinkings, where the spirit bows itself down,—the body does no more than tell it. I never gave a girl a crown in my life which gave me half the pleasure. ”

“ PARIS.
Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight: ’tis ye who open this door and let the stranger in. ”

“ There is a sort of a pleasing half guilty blush, where the blood is more in fault than the man:—’tis sent impetuous from the heart, and virtue flies after it,—not to call it back, but to make the sensation of it more delicious to the nerves:—’tis associated.—
But I’ll not describe it;—I felt something at first within me which was not in strict unison with the lesson of virtue I had given her the night before.—I sought five minutes for a card;—I knew I had not one.—I took up a pen.—I laid it down again;—my hand trembled:—the devil was in me. ”

“ If there is not a fund of honest gullibility in man, so much the worse;—my heart relented, and I gave up my second resolution as quietly as the first.—Why should I chastise one for the trespass of another? If thou art tributary to this tyrant of an host, thought I, looking up in her face, so much harder is thy bread.
If I had not had more than four louis d’ors in my purse, there was no such thing as rising up and showing her the door, till I had first laid three of them out in a pair of ruffles. ”

“ The thirst of this, continued I, as impatient as that which inflames the breast of the connoisseur, has led me from my own home into France,—and from France will lead me through Italy;—’tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other,—and the world, better than we do. ”

“ I look’d at the picture she had tied in a black riband about my neck,—and blush’d as I look’d at it.—I would have given the world to have kiss’d it,—but was ashamed.—And shall this tender flower, said I, pressing it between my hands,—shall it be smitten to its very root,—and smitten, Yorick! ”

“ When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him, as if he sought for an object to share it with.—In doing this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate,—the arteries beat all cheerily together, and every power which sustained life, performed it with so little friction, that ’twould have confounded the most physical précieuse in France ”

“ If a man knows the heart, he will know it was impossible to go back instantly to my chamber;—it was touching a cold key with a flat third to it upon the close of a piece of music, which had call’d forth my affections:—therefore, when I let go the hand of the fille de chambre, I remained at the gate of the hotel for some time, looking at every one who pass’d by,—and forming conjectures upon them, till my attention got fix’d upon a single object which confounded all kind of reasoning upon him. ”

“ Monsieur le Notaire, said the gentleman, raising himself up a little, I have nothing to bequeath, which will pay the expense of bequeathing, except the history of myself, which I could not die in peace, unless I left it as a legacy to the world: the profits arising out of it I bequeath to you for the pains of taking it from me.—It is a story so uncommon, it must be read by all mankind;—it will make the fortunes of your house.—The notary dipp’d his pen into his inkhorn.—Almighty Director of every event in my life! ”

“ When you have gained the top of Mount Taurira, you run presently down to Lyons:—adieu, then, to all rapid movements! ’Tis a journey of caution; and it fares better with sentiments, not to be in a hurry with them; so I contracted with a voiturin to take his time with a couple of mules, and convoy me in my own chaise safe to Turin, through Savoy.
Poor, patient, quiet, honest people! fear not: your poverty, the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by the world, nor will your valleys be invaded by it.—Nature! ”

“ The genius of a people, where nothing but the monarchy is salique, having ceded this department, with sundry others, totally to the women,—by a continual higgling with customers of all ranks and sizes from morning to night, like so many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collisions they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant:—Monsieur le Mari is little better than the stone under your foot. ”

“ Of all the bridges which ever were built, the whole world who have pass’d over the Pont Neuf must own, that it is the noblest,—the finest,—the grandest,—the lightest,—the longest,—the broadest, that ever conjoin’d land and land together upon the face of the terraqueous globe. ”

“ We get forwards in the world, not so much by doing services, as receiving them; you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it. ”

“ A polish’d nation, my dear Count, said I, makes every one its debtor: and besides, Urbanity itself, like the fair sex, has so many charms, it goes against the heart to say it can do ill; and yet, I believe, there is but a certain line of perfection, that man, take him altogether, is empower’d to arrive at:—if he gets beyond, he rather exchanges qualities than gets them. ”

“ What a great scale is every thing upon in this city thought I.—The utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker’s ideas could have gone no further than to have “dipped it into a pail of water.”—What difference! ’tis like Time to Eternity!
I confess I do hate all cold conceptions, as I do the puny ideas which engender them; and am generally so struck with the great works of nature, that for my own part, if I could help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain at least. ”

“ I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I had forgot every tittle of what she had said;—so looking back, and seeing her still standing in the door of the shop, as if to look whether I went right or not,—I returned back to ask her, whether the first turn was to my right or left,—for that I had absolutely forgot.—Is it possible! said she, half laughing. ’Tis very possible, replied I, when a man is thinking more of a woman than of her good advice. ”

“ I had not yet seen her face—’twas not material: for the drawing was instantly set about, and long before we had got to the door of the Remise, Fancy had finished the whole head, and pleased herself as much with its fitting her goddess, as if she had dived into the Tiber for it;—but thou art a seduced, and a seducing slut; and albeit thou cheatest us seven times a day with thy pictures and images, yet with so many charms dost thou do it, and thou deckest out thy pictures in the shapes of so many angels of light, ’tis a shame to break with thee. ”