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Chapter 83 And the story tooif you please: for though I have all along been hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world, yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, and go on with the story for me that willI see the difficulties of the descriptions Im going to giveand feel my want of powers. It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the subtile aura of the brainbe it which it willan Invocation can do no hurtand I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me according as he sees good. The Invocation. Gentle Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of my beloved Cervantes; Thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and turnedst the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy presencetingedst his little urn of water with heaven-sent nectar, and all the time he wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic mantle oer his witherd stump (He lost his hand at the battle of Lepanto.), and wide extended it to all the evils of his life Turn in hither, I beseech thee!behold these breeches!they are all I have in worldthat piteous rent was given them at Lyons My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happend amongst emfor the laps are in Lombardy, and the rest of em hereI never had but six, and a cunning gypsey of a laundress at Milan cut me off the fore- laps of fiveTo do her justice, she did it with some considerationfor I was returning out of Italy. And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was moreover filchd from me at Sienna, and twice that I payd five Pauls for two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at CapuaI do not think a journey through France and Italy, provided a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe: there must be ups and downs, or how the duce should we get into vallies where Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.Tis nonsense to imagine they will lend you their voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and unless you pay twelve sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor peasant get butter to his bread?We really expect too muchand for the livre or two above par for your suppers and bedat the most they are but one shilling and ninepence halfpennywho would embroil their philosophy for it? for heavens and for your own sake, pay itpay it with both hands open, rather than leave Disappointment sitting drooping upon the eye of your fair Hostess and her Damsels in the gate-way, at your departureand besides, my dear Sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of em worth a pound- -at least I did For my uncle Tobys amours running all the way in my head, they had the same effect upon me as if they had been my ownI was in the most perfect state of bounty and good-will; and felt the kindliest harmony vibrating within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so that whether the roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; every thing I saw or had to do with, touchd upon some secret spring either of sentiment or rapture. They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down the fore-glass to hear them more distinctlyTis Maria; said the postillion, observing I was listeningPoor Maria, continued he (leaning his body on one side to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside her. The young fellow utterd this with an accent and a look so perfectly in tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow, I would give him a four-and-twenty sous piece, when I got to Moulins And who is poor Maria? said I. |
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