A Sentimental Journey | Page 6

- And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beggarly account of
three or four louis d'ors, which is the most I can be overreached
in?--Base passion! said I, turning myself about, as a man naturally does
upon a sudden reverse of sentiment,--base, ungentle passion! thy hand
is against every man, and every man's hand against thee.--Heaven
forbid! said she, raising her hand up to her forehead, for I had turned
full in front upon the lady whom I had seen in conference with the
monk: --she had followed us unperceived.--Heaven forbid, indeed! said
I, offering her my own;-- she had a black pair of silk gloves, open only
at the thumb and two fore-fingers, so accepted it without reserve,--and I
led her up to the door of the Remise.
Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key above fifty times before he had
found out he had come with a wrong one in his hand: we were as
impatient as himself to have it opened; and so attentive to the obstacle

that I continued holding her hand almost without knowing it: so that
Monsieur Dessein left us together with her hand in mine, and with our
faces turned towards the door of the Remise, and said he would be back
in five minutes.
Now a colloquy of five minutes, in such a situation, is worth one of as
many ages, with your faces turned towards the street: in the latter case,
'tis drawn from the objects and occurrences without;-- when your eyes
are fixed upon a dead blank,--you draw purely from yourselves. A
silence of a single moment upon Mons. Dessein's leaving us, had been
fatal to the situation--she had infallibly turned about;--so I begun the
conversation instantly. -
- But what were the temptations (as I write not to apologize for the
weaknesses of my heart in this tour,--but to give an account of
them)--shall be described with the same simplicity with which I felt
them.
THE REMISE DOOR. CALAIS.
When I told the reader that I did not care to get out of the desobligeant,
because I saw the monk in close conference with a lady just arrived at
the inn--I told him the truth,--but I did not tell him the whole truth; for I
was as full as much restrained by the appearance and figure of the lady
he was talking to. Suspicion crossed my brain and said, he was telling
her what had passed: something jarred upon it within me,--I wished
him at his convent.
When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment
a world of pains.--I was certain she was of a better order of
beings;--however, I thought no more of her, but went on and wrote my
preface.
The impression returned upon my encounter with her in the street; a
guarded frankness with which she gave me her hand, showed, I thought,
her good education and her good sense; and as I led her on, I felt a
pleasurable ductility about her, which spread a calmness over all my
spirits -
- Good God! how a man might lead such a creature as this round the
world with him! -
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.
When we had got to the door of the Remise, she withdrew her hand
from across her forehead, and let me see the original: --it was a face of
about six-and-twenty,--of a clear transparent brown, simply set off
without rouge or powder;--it was not critically handsome, but there was
that in it, which, in the frame of mind I was in, attached me much more
to it,--it was interesting: I fancied it wore the characters of a widow'd
look, and in that state of its declension, which had passed the two first
paroxysms of sorrow, and was quietly beginning to reconcile itself to
its loss;--but a thousand other distresses might have traced the same
lines; I wish'd to know what they had been--and was ready to inquire,
(had the same bon ton of conversation permitted, as in the days of
Esdras)--"What ailelh thee? and why art thou disquieted? and why is
thy understanding troubled?"--In a word, I felt benevolence for her;