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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 37 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 4.I.

Now I hate to hear a person, especially if he be a traveller, complain that
we do not get on so fast in France as we do in England; whereas we get on
much faster, consideratis considerandis; thereby always meaning, that if
you weigh their vehicles with the mountains of baggage which you lay both
before and behind upon them--and then consider their puny horses, with the
very little they give them--'tis a wonder they get on at all:  their
suffering is most unchristian, and 'tis evident thereupon to me, that a
French post-horse would not know what in the world to do, was it not for
the two words ...... and ...... in which there is as much sustenance, as if
you give him a peck of corn:  now as these words cost nothing, I long from
my soul to tell the reader what they are; but here is the question--they
must be told him plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or it
will answer no end--and yet to do it in that plain way--though their
reverences may laugh at it in the bed-chamber--full well I wot, they will
abuse it in the parlour:  for which cause, I have been volving and
revolving in my fancy some time, but to no purpose, by what clean device or
facette contrivance I might so modulate them, that whilst I satisfy that
ear which the reader chuses to lend me--I might not dissatisfy the other
which he keeps to himself.

--My ink burns my finger to try--and when I have--'twill have a worse
consequence--It will burn (I fear) my paper.

--No;--I dare not--

But if you wish to know how the abbess of Andouillets and a novice of her
convent got over the difficulty (only first wishing myself all imaginable
success)--I'll tell you without the least scruple.



Chapter 4.II.

The abbess of Andouillets, which if you look into the large set of
provincial maps now publishing at Paris, you will find situated amongst the
hills which divide Burgundy from Savoy, being in danger of an Anchylosis or
stiff joint (the sinovia of her knee becoming hard by long matins), and
having tried every remedy--first, prayers and thanksgiving; then
invocations to all the saints in heaven promiscuously--then particularly to
every saint who had ever had a stiff leg before her--then touching it with
all the reliques of the convent, principally with the thigh-bone of the man
of Lystra, who had been impotent from his youth--then wrapping it up in her
veil when she went to bed--then cross-wise her rosary--then bringing in to
her aid the secular arm, and anointing it with oils and hot fat of animals-
-then treating it with emollient and resolving fomentations--then with
poultices of marsh-mallows, mallows, bonus Henricus, white lillies and
fenugreek--then taking the woods, I mean the smoak of 'em, holding her
scapulary across her lap--then decoctions of wild chicory, water-cresses,
chervil, sweet cecily and cochlearia--and nothing all this while answering,
was prevailed on at last to try the hot-baths of Bourbon--so having first
obtained leave of the visitor-general to take care of her existence--she
ordered all to be got ready for her journey:  a novice of the convent of
about seventeen, who had been troubled with a whitloe in her middle finger,
by sticking it constantly into the abbess's cast poultices, &c.--had gained
such an interest, that overlooking a sciatical old nun, who might have been
set up for ever by the hot-baths of Bourbon, Margarita, the little novice,
was elected as the companion of the journey.

An old calesh, belonging to the abbesse, lined with green frize, was
ordered to be drawn out into the sun--the gardener of the convent being
chosen muleteer, led out the two old mules, to clip the hair from the rump-
ends of their tails, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busied, the one in
darning the lining, and the other in sewing on the shreds of yellow
binding, which the teeth of time had unravelled--the under-gardener dress'd
the muleteer's hat in hot wine-lees--and a taylor sat musically at it, in a
shed over-against the convent, in assorting four dozen of bells for the
harness, whistling to each bell, as he tied it on with a thong.--

--The carpenter and the smith of Andouillets held a council of wheels; and
by seven, the morning after, all look'd spruce, and was ready at the gate
of the convent for the hot-baths of Bourbon--two rows of the unfortunate
stood ready there an hour before.

The abbess of Andouillets, supported by Margarita the novice, advanced
slowly to the calesh, both clad in white, with their black rosaries hanging
at their breasts--

--There was a simple solemnity in the contrast:  they entered the calesh;
the nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of innocence, each occupied a
window, and as the abbess and Margarita look'd up--each (the sciatical poor
nun excepted)--each stream'd out the end of her veil in the air--then
kiss'd the lilly hand which let it go:  the good abbess and Margarita laid
their hands saint-wise upon their breasts--look'd up to heaven--then to
them--and look'd 'God bless you, dear sisters.'

I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been there.

The gardener, whom I shall now call the muleteer, was a little, hearty,
broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a fellow, who troubled
his head very little with the hows and whens of life; so had mortgaged a
month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine,
which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured
riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather was hot,
and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times more than he rode--
he found more occasions than those of nature, to fall back to the rear of
his carriage; till by frequent coming and going, it had so happen'd, that
all his wine had leak'd out at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one
half of the journey was finish'd.

Man is a creature born to habitudes.  The day had been sultry--the evening
was delicious--the wine was generous--the Burgundian hill on which it grew
was steep--a little tempting bush over the door of a cool cottage at the
foot of it, hung vibrating in full harmony with the passions--a gentle air
rustled distinctly through the leaves--'Come--come, thirsty muleteer,--come
in.'

--The muleteer was a son of Adam, I need not say a word more.  He gave the
mules, each of 'em, a sound lash, and looking in the abbess's and
Margarita's faces (as he did it)--as much as to say 'here I am'--he gave a
second good crack--as much as to say to his mules, 'get on'--so slinking
behind, he enter'd the little inn at the foot of the hill.

The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow, who
thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or what was to
follow it, provided he got but his scantling of Burgundy, and a little
chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, as how he
was chief gardener to the convent of Andouillets, &c. &c. and out of
friendship for the abbess and Mademoiselle Margarita, who was only in her
noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of Savoy, &c. &c.-
-and as how she had got a white swelling by her devotions--and what a
nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, &c. &c. and that if
the waters of Bourbon did not mend that leg--she might as well be lame of
both--&c. &c. &c.--He so contrived his story, as absolutely to forget the
heroine of it--and with her the little novice, and what was a more ticklish
point to be forgot than both--the two mules; who being creatures that take
advantage of the world, inasmuch as their parents took it of them--and they
not being in a condition to return the obligation downwards (as men and
women and beasts are)--they do it side-ways, and long-ways, and back-ways--
and up hill, and down hill, and which way they can.--Philosophers, with all
their ethicks, have never considered this rightly--how should the poor
muleteer, then in his cups, consider it at all? he did not in the least--
'tis time we do; let us leave him then in the vortex of his element, the
happiest and most thoughtless of mortal men--and for a moment let us look
after the mules, the abbess, and Margarita.

By virtue of the muleteer's two last strokes the mules had gone quietly on,
following their own consciences up the hill, till they had conquer'd about
one half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty old devil, at the
turn of an angle, giving a side glance, and no muleteer behind them,--

By my fig! said she, swearing, I'll go no further--And if I do, replied the
other, they shall make a drum of my hide.--

And so with one consent they stopp'd thus--



Chapter 4.III.

--Get on with you, said the abbess.

--Wh...ysh--ysh--cried Margarita.

Sh...a--shu..u--shu..u--sh..aw--shaw'd the abbess.

--Whu--v--w--whew--w--w--whuv'd Margarita, pursing up her sweet lips
betwixt a hoot and a whistle.

Thump--thump--thump--obstreperated the abbess of Andouillets with the end
of her gold-headed cane against the bottom of the calesh--

The old mule let a f...



Chapter 4.IV.

We are ruin'd and undone, my child, said the abbess to Margarita,--we shall
be here all night--we shall be plunder'd--we shall be ravished--

--We shall be ravish'd, said Margarita, as sure as a gun.

Sancta Maria! cried the abbess (forgetting the O!)--why was I govern'd by
this wicked stiff joint? why did I leave the convent of Andouillets? and
why didst thou not suffer thy servant to go unpolluted to her tomb?

O my finger! my finger! cried the novice, catching fire at the word
servant--why was I not content to put it here, or there, any where rather
than be in this strait?

Strait! said the abbess.

Strait--said the novice; for terror had struck their understandings--the
one knew not what she said--the other what she answer'd.

O my virginity! virginity! cried the abbess.

...inity! ...inity! said the novice, sobbing.



Chapter 4.V.

My dear mother, quoth the novice, coming a little to herself,--there are
two certain words, which I have been told will force any horse, or ass, or
mule, to go up a hill whether he will or no; be he never so obstinate or
ill-will'd, the moment he hears them utter'd, he obeys.  They are words
magic! cried the abbess in the utmost horror--No; replied Margarita calmly-
-but they are words sinful--What are they? quoth the abbess, interrupting
her:  They are sinful in the first degree, answered Margarita,--they are
mortal--and if we are ravished and die unabsolved of them, we shall both-
but you may pronounce them to me, quoth the abbess of Andouillets--They
cannot, my dear mother, said the novice, be pronounced at all; they will
make all the blood in one's body fly up into one's face--But you may
whisper them in my ear, quoth the abbess.

Heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to delegate to the inn at the bottom
of the hill? was there no generous and friendly spirit unemployed--no agent
in nature, by some monitory shivering, creeping along the artery which led
to his heart, to rouse the muleteer from his banquet?--no sweet minstrelsy
to bring back the fair idea of the abbess and Margarita, with their black
rosaries!

Rouse! rouse!--but 'tis too late--the horrid words are pronounced this
moment--

--and how to tell them--Ye, who can speak of every thing existing, with
unpolluted lips--instruct me--guide me--



Chapter 4.VI.

All sins whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they
were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or
venial:  there is no further division.  Now a venial sin being the
slightest and least of all sins--being halved--by taking either only the
half of it, and leaving the rest--or, by taking it all, and amicably
halving it betwixt yourself and another person--in course becomes diluted
into no sin at all.

Now I see no sin in saying, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, a hundred times
together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing the syllable ger, ger,
ger, ger, ger, were it from our matins to our vespers:  Therefore, my dear
daughter, continued the abbess of Andouillets--I will say bou, and thou
shalt say ger; and then alternately, as there is no more sin in fou than in
bou--Thou shalt say fou--and I will come in (like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut,
at our complines) with ter.  And accordingly the abbess, giving the pitch
note, set off thus:

Abbess,.....)  Bou...bou...bou..
Margarita,..)  ---ger,..ger,..ger.

Margarita,..)  Fou...fou...fou..
Abbess,.....)  ---ter,..ter,..ter.

The two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; but
it went no further--'Twill answer by an' by, said the novice.

Abbess,.....)  Bou.  bou.  bou.  bou.  bou.  bou.
Margarita,..)  ---ger,  ger,  ger,  ger,  ger,  ger.

Quicker still, cried Margarita.  Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou,
fou.

Quicker still, cried Margarita.  Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou,
bou.

Quicker still--God preserve me; said the abbess--They do not understand us,
cried Margarita--But the Devil does, said the abbess of Andouillets.



Chapter 4.VII.

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 Macon 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
Fa-ra diddle di
and a fa-ri diddle d
and a high-dum--dye-dum
fiddle. . .dumb-c.

And now, Madam, we may venture, I hope a little to go on.



Chapter 4.VIII.

--All you need say of Fontainbleau (in case you are ask'd) is, that it
stands about forty miles (south something) from Paris, in the middle of a
large forest--That there is something great in it--That the king goes there
once every two or three years, with his whole court, for the pleasure of
the chace--and that, during that carnival of sporting, any English
gentleman of fashion (you need not forget yourself) may be accommodated
with a nag or two, to partake of the sport, taking care only not to out-
gallop the king--

Though there are two reasons why you need not talk loud of this to every
one.

First, Because 'twill make the said nags the harder to be got; and

Secondly, 'Tis not a word of it true.--Allons!

As for Sens--you may dispatch--in a word--''Tis an archiepiscopal see.'

--For Joigny--the less, I think, one says of it the better.

But for Auxerre--I could go on for ever:  for in my grand tour through
Europe, in which, after all, my father (not caring to trust me with any
one) attended me himself, with my uncle Toby, and Trim, and Obadiah, and
indeed most of the family, except my mother, who being taken up with a
project of knitting my father a pair of large worsted breeches--(the thing
is common sense)--and she not caring to be put out of her way, she staid at
home, at Shandy Hall, to keep things right during the expedition; in which,
I say, my father stopping us two days at Auxerre, and his researches being
ever of such a nature, that they would have found fruit even in a desert--
he has left me enough to say upon Auxerre:  in short, wherever my father
went--but 'twas more remarkably so, in this journey through France and
Italy, than in any other stages of his life--his road seemed to lie so much
on one side of that, wherein all other travellers have gone before him--he
saw kings and courts and silks of all colours, in such strange lights--and
his remarks and reasonings upon the characters, the manners, and customs of
the countries we pass'd over, were so opposite to those of all other mortal
men, particularly those of my uncle Toby and Trim--(to say nothing of
myself)--and to crown all--the occurrences and scrapes which we were
perpetually meeting and getting into, in consequence of his systems and
opiniotry--they were of so odd, so mix'd and tragi-comical a contexture--
That the whole put together, it appears of so different a shade and tint
from any tour of Europe, which was ever executed--that I will venture to
pronounce--the fault must be mine and mine only--if it be not read by all
travellers and travel-readers, till travelling is no more,--or which comes
to the same point--till the world, finally, takes it into its head to stand
still.--

--But this rich bale is not to be open'd now; except a small thread or two
of it, merely to unravel the mystery of my father's stay at Auxerre.

--As I have mentioned it--'tis too slight to be kept suspended; and when
'tis wove in, there is an end of it.

We'll go, brother Toby, said my father, whilst dinner is coddling--to the
abbey of Saint Germain, if it be only to see these bodies, of which
Monsieur Sequier has given such a recommendation.--I'll go see any body,
quoth my uncle Toby; for he was all compliance through every step of the
journey--Defend me! said my father--they are all mummies--Then one need not
shave; quoth my uncle Toby--Shave! no--cried my father--'twill be more like
relations to go with our beards on--So out we sallied, the corporal lending
his master his arm, and bringing up the rear, to the abbey of Saint
Germain.

Every thing is very fine, and very rich, and very superb, and very
magnificent, said my father, addressing himself to the sacristan, who was a
younger brother of the order of Benedictines--but our curiosity has led us
to see the bodies, of which Monsieur Sequier has given the world so exact a
description.--The sacristan made a bow, and lighting a torch first, which
he had always in the vestry ready for the purpose; he led us into the tomb
of St. Heribald--This, said the sacristan, laying his hand upon the tomb,
was a renowned prince of the house of Bavaria, who under the successive
reigns of Charlemagne, Louis le Debonnair, and Charles the Bald, bore a
great sway in the government, and had a principal hand in bringing every
thing into order and discipline--

Then he has been as great, said my uncle, in the field, as in the cabinet--
I dare say he has been a gallant soldier--He was a monk--said the
sacristan.

My uncle Toby and Trim sought comfort in each other's faces--but found it
not:  my father clapped both his hands upon his cod-piece, which was a way
he had when any thing hugely tickled him:  for though he hated a monk and
the very smell of a monk worse than all the devils in hell--yet the shot
hitting my uncle Toby and Trim so much harder than him, 'twas a relative
triumph; and put him into the gayest humour in the world.

--And pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my father, rather
sportingly:  This tomb, said the young Benedictine, looking downwards,
contains the bones of Saint Maxima, who came from Ravenna on purpose to
touch the body--

--Of Saint Maximus, said my father, popping in with his saint before him,--
they were two of the greatest saints in the whole martyrology, added my
father--Excuse me, said the sacristan--'twas to touch the bones of Saint
Germain, the builder of the abbey--And what did she get by it? said my
uncle Toby--What does any woman get by it? said my father--Martyrdome;
replied the young Benedictine, making a bow down to the ground, and
uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a cadence, it disarmed my
father for a moment.  'Tis supposed, continued the Benedictine, that St.
Maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred years, and two hundred before her
canonization--'Tis but a slow rise, brother Toby, quoth my father, in this
self-same army of martyrs.--A desperate slow one, an' please your honour,
said Trim, unless one could purchase--I should rather sell out entirely,
quoth my uncle Toby--I am pretty much of your opinion, brother Toby, said
my father.

--Poor St. Maxima! said my uncle Toby low to himself, as we turn'd from her
tomb:  She was one of the fairest and most beautiful ladies either of Italy
or France, continued the sacristan--But who the duce has got lain down
here, besides her? quoth my father, pointing with his cane to a large tomb
as we walked on--It is Saint Optat, Sir, answered the sacristan--And
properly is Saint Optat plac'd! said my father:  And what is Saint Optat's
story? continued he.  Saint Optat, replied the sacristan, was a bishop--

--I thought so, by heaven! cried my father, interrupting him--Saint Optat!-
-how should Saint Optat fail? so snatching out his pocket-book, and the
young Benedictine holding him the torch as he wrote, he set it down as a
new prop to his system of Christian names, and I will be bold to say, so
disinterested was he in the search of truth, that had he found a treasure
in Saint Optat's tomb, it would not have made him half so rich:  'Twas as
successful a short visit as ever was paid to the dead; and so highly was
his fancy pleas'd with all that had passed in it,--that he determined at
once to stay another day in Auxerre.

--I'll see the rest of these good gentry to-morrow, said my father, as we
cross'd over the square--And while you are paying that visit, brother
Shandy, quoth my uncle Toby--the corporal and I will mount the ramparts.
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