——The duce take it! said my uncle Toby.
CHAPTER XVII
These attacks of Mrs. Wadman, you will readily conceive to be of different kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of, and from the same reasons. A general looker-on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all——or if he did, would confound them all together——but I write not to them: it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as I come up to them, which will not be for some chapters; having nothing more to add in this, but that in a bundle of original papers and drawings which my father took care to roll up by themselves, there is a plan of Bouchain in perfect preservation (and shall be kept so, whilst I have power to preserve anything), upon the lower corner of which, on the right hand side, there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to imagine, were Mrs. Wadman’s; for the opposite side of the margin, which I suppose to have been my uncle Toby’s, is absolutely clean: This seems an authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite corner of the map, which are unquestionably the very holes, through which it has been pricked up in the sentry-box—— 409
By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with its stigmata and pricks, more than all the relicks of the Romish church——always excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the pricks which entered the flesh of St. Radagunda in the desert, which in your road from Fesse to Cluny, the nuns of that name will shew you for love.
CHAPTER XVIII
I think, an’ please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are quite destroyed——and the bason is upon a level with the mole——I think so too; replied my uncle Toby with a sigh half suppress’d——but step into the parlour, Trim, for the stipulation——it lies upon the table.
It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it—
——Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no further occasion for our services. The more, an’ please your honour, the pity, said the corporal; in uttering which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his pickax, his pioneer’s shovel, his picquets, and other little military stores, in order to carry them off the field——when a heigh-ho! from the sentry-box, which being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him.
——No; said the corporal to himself, I’ll do it before his honour rises to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again, with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the glacis——but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert him——he loosen’d a sod or two——pared their edges with his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle Toby’s feet, and began as follows.
CHAPTER XIX
It was a thousand pities——though I believe, an’ please your honour, I am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier—— 410
A soldier, cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the corporal, is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters——But not so often, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal——My uncle Toby gave a nod.
It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon Dunkirk, and the mole, as Servius Sulpicius, in returning out of Asia (when he sailed from Ægina towards Megara), did upon Corinth and Pyreus——
—“It was a thousand pities, an’ please your honour, to destroy these works——and a thousand pities to have let them stood.”——
——Thou art right, Trim, in both cases; said my uncle Toby.——This, continued the corporal, is the reason, that from the beginning of their demolition to the end——I have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh’d, or cry’d, or talk’d of past done deeds, or told your honour one story good or bad——
——Thou hast many excellencies, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and I hold it not the least of them, as thou happenest to be a story-teller, that of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my painful hours, or divert me in my grave ones—thou hast seldom told me a bad one——
——Because, an’ please your honour, except one of a King of Bohemia and his seven castles,—they are all true; for they are about myself——
I do not like the subject the worse, Trim, said my uncle Toby, on that score: But prithee what is this story? thou hast excited my curiosity.
I’ll tell it your honour, quoth the corporal, directly—Provided, said my uncle Toby, looking earnestly towards Dunkirk and the mole again——provided it is not a merry one; to such, Trim, a man should ever bring one half of the entertainment along with him; and the disposition I am in at present would wrong both thee, Trim, and thy story——It is not a merry one by any means, replied the corporal—Nor would I have it altogether a grave one, added my uncle Toby——It is neither the one nor the other, replied the corporal, but will suit your honour exactly——Then I’ll thank thee for it with all my heart, cried my uncle Toby; so prithee begin it, Trim.
The corporal made his reverence; and though it is not so easy a matter as the world imagines, to pull off a lank Montero-cap with grace——or a whit less difficult, in my conceptions, when a man is sitting squat upon the ground, to make a bow so teeming with respect as the corporal was wont; yet by suffering the 411 palm of his right hand, which was towards his master, to slip backwards upon the grass, a little beyond his body, in order to allow it the greater sweep——and by an unforced compression, at the same time, of his cap with the thumb and the two forefingers of his left, by which the diameter of the cap became reduced, so that it might be said, rather to be insensibly squeez’d—than pull’d off with a flatus——the corporal acquitted himself of both in a better manner than the posture of his affairs promised; and having hemmed twice, to find in what key his story would best go, and best suit his master’s humour,—he exchanged a single look of kindness with him, and set off thus.
THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND HIS SEVEN CASTLES
There was a certain king of Bo - - he———
As the corporal was entering the confines of Bohemia, my uncle Toby obliged him to halt for a single moment; he had set out bare-headed, having, since he pull’d off his Montero-cap in the latter end of the last chapter, left it lying beside him on the ground.
——The eye of Goodness espieth all things——so that before the corporal had well got through the first five words of his story, had my uncle Toby twice touch’d his Montero-cap with the end of his cane, interrogatively——as much as to say, Why don’t you put it on, Trim? Trim took it up with the most respectful slowness, and casting a glance of humiliation as he did it, upon the embroidery of the fore-part, which being dismally tarnish’d and fray’d moreover in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern, he lay’d it down again between his two feet, in order to moralise upon the subject.