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 _Maconese_, 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