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—— 360
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——
Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereunto, 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.
I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their “χωρισμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ Σώματος, εἰς τὸ καλῶς φιλοσοφεῖν”——[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——
——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong?
You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early.
CHAPTER XIV
——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.
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 361 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.
In Lessius’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can be imagined——
——We find them less now——
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.
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.
CHAPTER XV
———“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).
And so making all possible speed, from
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. 362
CHAPTER XVI
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.
That be you in never so kindly a propensity to sleep——tho’ 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.
—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 Curé offers you a pinch of snuff——or a poor soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling his box——or the priestess 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 363 which, the rational powers get so thoroughly awakened——you may get ’em to sleep again as you can.