A Sentimental Journey

A Sentimental Journey

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Title: A Sentimental Journey
Author: Laurence Sterne

Release Date: February, 1997 [EBook #804] [This file was first posted
on February 12, 1997] [Most recently updated: September 25, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY ***

Transcribed from the 1892 George Bell and Son edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY

They order, said I, this matter better in France.--You have been in
France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil
triumph in the world.--Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with
myself, That one and twenty miles sailing, for 'tis absolutely no further
from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights: -- I'll look into
them: so, giving up the argument,--I went straight to my lodgings, put
up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches,--"the coat I
have on," said I, looking at the sleeve, "will do;"--took a place in the
Dover stage; and the packet sailing at nine the next morning,--by three I
had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, so
incontestably in France, that had I died that night of an indigestion, the
whole world could not have suspended the effects of the droits
d'aubaine;--my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches,--portmanteau and
all, must have gone to the King of France;--even the little picture which
I have so long worn, and so often have told thee, Eliza, I would carry
with me into my grave, would have been torn from my
neck!--Ungenerous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger,
whom your subjects had beckoned to their coast!--By heaven! Sire, it is
not well done; and much does it grieve me, 'tis the monarch of a people

so civilized and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine
feelings, that I have to reason with! -
But I have scarce set a foot in your dominions. -
CALAIS.
When I had fished my dinner, and drank the King of France's health, to
satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but, on the contrary, high
honour for the humanity of his temper,--I rose up an inch taller for the
accommodation.
- No--said I--the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be
misled, like other people; but there is a mildness in their blood. As I
acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a finer kind upon my
cheek--more warm and friendly to man, than what Burgundy (at least
of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could
have produced.
- Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in this
world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many
kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we do by the way?
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 precieuse in France; with all her
materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine. -
I'm confident, said I to myself, I should have overset her creed.
The accession of that idea carried nature, at that time, as high as she
could go;--I was at peace with the world before, and this finish'd the
treaty with myself. -
- Now, was I King of France, cried I--what a moment for an orphan to
have begg'd his father's portmanteau