A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne
page 15 of 148 (10%)
page 15 of 148 (10%)
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dear Sir, that in giving you a chaise which would fall to pieces
before you had got half-way to Paris,--figure to yourself how much I should suffer, in giving an ill impression of myself to a man of honour, and lying at the mercy, as I must do, d'un homme d'esprit. The dose was made up exactly after my own prescription; so I could not help tasting it,--and, returning Mons. Dessein his bow, without more casuistry we walk'd together towards his Remise, to take a view of his magazine of chaises. IN THE STREET. CALAIS. It must needs be a hostile kind of a world, when the buyer (if it be but of a sorry post-chaise) cannot go forth with the seller thereof into the street to terminate the difference betwixt them, but he instantly falls into the same frame of mind, and views his conventionist with the same sort of eye, as if he was going along with him to Hyde-park corner to fight a duel. For my own part, being but a poor swordsman, and no way a match for Monsieur Dessein, I felt the rotation of all the movements within me, to which the situation is incident;--I looked at Monsieur Dessein through and through--eyed him as he walk'd along in profile,--then, en face;--thought like a Jew,--then a Turk,--disliked his wig,-- cursed him by my gods,--wished him at the devil. - - And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beggarly account of three or four louis d'ors, which is the most I can be overreached in?--Base passion! said I, turning myself about, as a |
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