<SPAN name="linkCH0213" id="linkCH0213"></SPAN>
<h2>Chapter 3.XCV.</h2>
<p>Was I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this
moment with my apothecary, how and where I will take his
clyster—I should certainly declare against submitting to it
before my friends; and therefore I never seriously think upon the
mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up
and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I
constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the
Disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in
my own house—but rather in some decent inn—at home, I
know it,—the concern of my friends, and the last services of
wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand
of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that I
shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in
an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a
few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual
attention—but mark. This inn should not be the inn at
Abbeville—if there was not another inn in the universe, I
would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so</p>
<p>Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the
morning—Yes, by four, Sir,—or by Genevieve! I'll raise
a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.</p>
<SPAN name="linkCH0214" id="linkCH0214"></SPAN>
<h2>Chapter 3.XCVI.</h2>
<p>'Make them like unto a wheel,' is a bitter sarcasm, as all the
learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for
making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the
children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the
great bishop Hall, 'tis one of the severest imprecations which
David ever utter'd against the enemies of the Lord—and, as if
he had said, 'I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling
about.'—So much motion, continues he (for he was very
corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by
the same analogy, is so much of heaven.</p>
<p>Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of
motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy—and that to
stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the
devil—</p>
<p>Hollo! Ho!—the whole world's asleep!—bring out the
horses—grease the wheels—tie on the mail—and
drive a nail into that moulding—I'll not lose a
moment—</p>
<p>Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not
whereonto, for that would make an Ixion's wheel of it) he curseth
his enemies, according to the bishop's habit of body, should
certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in
Palestine at that time or not—and my wheel, for the contrary
reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its
revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to turn
commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had great
store in that hilly country.</p>
<p>I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear
Jenny) for their '(Greek)'—(their) 'getting out of the body,
in order to think well.' No man thinks right, whilst he is in it;
blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn
differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax
or too tense a fibre—Reason is, half of it, Sense; and the
measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present
appetites and concoctions.—</p>
<p>—But which of the two, in the present case, do you think
to be mostly in the wrong?</p>
<p>You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so
early.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.XCVII.</h2>
<p>—But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my
beard till I got to Paris;—yet I hate to make mysteries of
nothing;—'tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little
souls from which Lessius (lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.)
hath made his estimate, wherein he setteth forth, That one Dutch
mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare,
for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as
great a number of souls (counting from the fall of Adam) as can
possibly be damn'd to the end of the world.</p>
<p>From what he has made this second estimate—unless from the
parental goodness of God—I don't know—I am much more at
a loss what could be in Franciscus Ribbera's head, who pretends
that no less a space than one of two hundred Italian miles
multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to hold the like
number—he certainly must have gone upon some of the old Roman
souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a
gradual and most tabid decline, in the course of eighteen hundred
years, they must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have come, when
he wrote, almost to nothing.</p>
<p>In Lessius's time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little
as can be imagined—</p>
<p>—We find them less now—</p>
<p>And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go
on from little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not
one moment to affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall
have no souls at all; which being the period beyond which I doubt
likewise of the existence of the Christian faith, 'twill be one
advantage that both of 'em will be exactly worn out together.</p>
<p>Blessed Jupiter! and blessed every other heathen god and
goddess! for now ye will all come into play again, and with Priapus
at your tails—what jovial times!—but where am I? and
into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing? I—I who
must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste no more of 'em
than what I borrow from my imagination—peace to thee,
generous fool! and let me go on.</p>
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<h2>Chapter 3.XCVIII.</h2>
<p>—'So hating, I say, to make mysteries of nothing'—I
intrusted it with the post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the
stones; he gave a crack with his whip to balance the compliment;
and with the thill-horse trotting, and a sort of an up and a down
of the other, we danced it along to Ailly au clochers, famed in
days of yore for the finest chimes in the world; but we danced
through it without music—the chimes being greatly out of
order—(as in truth they were through all France).</p>
<p>And so making all possible speed, from</p>
<p>Ailly au clochers, I got to Hixcourt, from Hixcourt I got to
Pequignay, and from Pequignay, I got to Amiens, concerning which
town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have informed you
once before—and that was—that Janatone went there to
school.</p>
<SPAN name="linkCH0217" id="linkCH0217"></SPAN>
<h2>Chapter 3.XCIX.</h2>
<p>In the whole catalogue of those whiffling vexations which come
puffing across a man's canvass, there is not one of a more teasing
and tormenting nature, than this particular one which I am going to
describe—and for which (unless you travel with an
avance-courier, which numbers do in order to prevent
it)—there is no help: and it is this.</p>
<p>That be you in never so kindly a propensity to
sleep—though you are passing perhaps through the finest
country—upon the best roads, and in the easiest carriage for
doing it in the world—nay, was you sure you could sleep fifty
miles straight forwards, without once opening your eyes—nay,
what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be of
any truth in Euclid, that you should upon all accounts be full as
well asleep as awake—nay, perhaps better—Yet the
incessant returns of paying for the horses at every
stage,—with the necessity thereupon of putting your hand into
your pocket, and counting out from thence three livres fifteen sous
(sous by sous), puts an end to so much of the project, that you
cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a post and
a half, that is but nine)—were it to save your soul from
destruction.</p>
<p>—I'll be even with 'em, quoth I, for I'll put the precise
sum into a piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the
way: 'Now I shall have nothing to do,' said I (composing myself to
rest), 'but to drop this gently into the post-boy's hat, and not
say a word.'—Then there wants two sous more to drink—or
there is a twelve sous piece of Louis XIV. which will not
pass—or a livre and some odd liards to be brought over from
the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot; which altercations (as a
man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him: still is sweet
sleep retrievable; and still might the flesh weigh down the spirit,
and recover itself of these blows—but then, by heaven! you
have paid but for a single post—whereas 'tis a post and a
half; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the
print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes,
whether you will or no: Then Monsieur le Cure offers you a pinch of
snuff—or a poor soldier shews you his leg—or a
shaveling his box—or the priestesse of the cistern will water
your wheels—they do not want it—but she swears by her
priesthood (throwing it back) that they do:—then you have all
these points to argue, or consider over in your mind; in doing of
which, the rational powers get so thoroughly awakened—you may
get 'em to sleep again as you can.</p>
<p>It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had
pass'd clean by the stables of Chantilly—</p>
<p>—But the postillion first affirming, and then persisting
in it to my face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, I
open'd my eyes to be convinced—and seeing the mark upon it as
plain as my nose—I leap'd out of the chaise in a passion, and
so saw every thing at Chantilly in spite.—I tried it but for
three posts and a half, but believe 'tis the best principle in the
world to travel speedily upon; for as few objects look very
inviting in that mood—you have little or nothing to stop you;
by which means it was that I passed through St. Dennis, without
turning my head so much as on one side towards the Abby—</p>
<p>—Richness of their treasury! stuff and
nonsense!—bating their jewels, which are all false, I would
not give three sous for any one thing in it, but Jaidas's
lantern—nor for that either, only as it grows dark, it might
be of use.</p>
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