HAVING settled all these little matters, I got into my post-chaise with
more ease than ever I got into a post-chaise in my life; and La Fleur
having got one large jack-boot on the far side of a little _bidet_, {588}
and another on this (for I count nothing of his legs)—he canter’d away
before me as happy and as perpendicular as a prince.—But what is
happiness! what is grandeur in this painted scene of life! A dead ass,
before we had got a league, put a sudden stop to La Fleur’s career;—his
bidet would not pass by it,—a contention arose betwixt them, and the poor
fellow was kick’d out of his jack-boots the very first kick.
La Fleur bore his fall like a French Christian, saying neither more nor
less upon it, than _Diable_! So presently got up, and came to the charge
again astride his bidet, beating him up to it as he would have beat his
drum.
The bidet flew from one side of the road to the other, then back
again,—then this way, then that way, and in short, every way but by the
dead ass:—La Fleur insisted upon the thing—and the bidet threw him.
What’s the matter, La Fleur, said I, with this bidet of thine? Monsieur,
said he, _c’est un cheval le plus opiniâtre du monde_.—Nay, if he is a
conceited beast, he must go his own way, replied I. So La Fleur got off
him, and giving him a good sound lash, the bidet took me at my word, and
away he scampered back to Montreuil.—_Peste_! said La Fleur.
It is not _mal-à-propos_ to take notice here, that though La Fleur
availed himself but of two different terms of exclamation in this
encounter,—namely, _Diable_! and _Peste_! that there are, nevertheless,
three in the French language: like the positive, comparative, and
superlative, one or the other of which serves for every unexpected throw
of the dice in life.
_Le Diable_! which is the first, and positive degree, is generally used
upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only fall out
contrary to your expectations; such as—the throwing once doublets—La
Fleur’s being kick’d off his horse, and so forth.—Cuckoldom, for the same
reason, is always—_Le Diable_!
But, in cases where the cast has something provoking in it, as in that of
the bidet’s running away after, and leaving La Fleur aground in
jack-boots,—’tis the second degree.
’Tis then _Peste_!