Le Diable! which is the first and positive degree, is generally used upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things only fall out contrary to your expectations—such as—the throwing once doublets⁷—La Fleur’s being kick’d off his horse, and so forth—cuckoldom, for the same reason, is always—Le Diable!

But in cases where the cast has something provoking in it, as in that of the Bidet’s running away after, and leaving La Fleur aground in jack-boots—’tis the second degree.

’Tis then Peste!

And for the third—

—But here my heart is wrung with pity and fellow-feeling, when I reflect what miseries must have been their lot, and how bitterly so refined a people must have smarted, to have forced them upon the use of it.—

Grant me, O ye powers which touch the tongue with eloquence in distress!—whatever is my cast, grant me but decent words to exclaim in, and I will give my nature way.

—But as these were not to be had in France, I resolved to take every evil just as it befel me without any exclamation at all.

La Fleur, who had made no such covenant with himself, followed the Bidet with his eyes till it was got out of sight—and then, you may imagine if you please with what word he closed the whole affair.

As there was no hunting down a frighten’d horse in jack-boots, there remained no alternative but taking La Fleur either behind the chaise, or into it.—

I preferred the latter, and in half an hour we got to the post-house at Nampont.