| Laurence Sterne. (1713–1768). A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. |
| The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917. |
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| 16. The Remise. Door. Calais |
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| C’EST bien comique, ’t is very droll, said the lady smiling, from the reflection that this was the second time we had been left together by a parcel of nonsensical contingencies—c’ est bien comique, said she.— | 1 |
| —There wants nothing, said I, to make it so, but the comic use which the gallantry of a Frenchman would put it to—to make love the first moment, and an offer of his person the second. | 2 |
| ’T is their fort, replied the lady. | 3 |
| It is supposed so at least—and how it has come to pass, continued I, I know not: but they have certainly got the credit of understanding more of love, and making it better than any other nation upon earth; but for my own part, I think them errant bunglers, and in truth the worst set of marksmen that ever tried Cupid’s patience. | 4 |
| —To think of making love by sentiments! | 5 |
| I should as soon think of making a genteel suit of clothes out of remnants:—and to do it—pop—at first sight by declaration—is submitting the offer and themselves with it, to be sifted with all their pours and contres, by an unheated mind. | 6 |
| The lady attended as if she expected I should go on. | 7 |
| Consider then, Madam, continued I, laying my hand upon hers— | 8 |
| That grave people hate Love for the name’s sake— | 9 |
| That selfish people hate it for their own— | 10 |
| Hypocrites for heaven’s— | 11 |
| And that all of us, both old and young, being ten times worse frighten’d than hurt by the very report—What a want of knowledge in this branch of commerce a man betrays, who ever lets the word come out of his lips, till an hour or two at least after the time that his silence upon it becomes tormenting. A course of small, quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm—nor so vague as to be misunderstood—with now and then a look of kindness, and little or nothing said upon it—leaves Nature for your mistress, and she fashions it to her mind— | 12 |
| Then I solemnly declare, said the lady, blushing—you have been making love to me all this while. | 13 |
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