Adieu, poor luckless maiden! imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion of a stranger, as he journeyeth on his way, now pours into thy wounds—the being who has twice bruised thee can only bind them up for ever.

The Bourbonnois

There was nothing from which I had painted out for myself so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the vintage, through this part of France; but pressing through this gate of sorrow to it, my sufferings have totally unfitted me: in every scene of festivity I saw Maria in the back-ground of the piece, sitting pensive under her poplar; and I had got almost to Lyons before I was able to cast a shade across her——

——Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw—and ’tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven—eternal fountain of our feelings!—’tis here I trace thee——and this is thy “divinity that stirs within me”——not that, in some sad and sickening moments, “my soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction”³——mere pomp of words!——but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself—all comes from thee, great—great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation——Touch’d with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish—hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou giv’st a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the bleakest mountains—he finds the lacerated lamb of another’s flock——This moment I beheld him leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking down upon it!——Oh! had I come one moment sooner!——it bleeds to death——his gentle heart bleeds with it——

Peace to thee, generous swain!——I see thou walkest off with anguish—but thy joys shall balance it—for happy is thy cottage—and happy is the sharer of it—and happy are the lambs which sport about thee!

The Supper

A shoe coming loose from the fore-foot of the thill-horse, at the beginning of the ascent of mount Taurira,⁴ the postilion dismounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in his pocket; as the ascent was of five or six miles, and that horse our main dependence, I made a point of having the shoe fasten’d on again, as well as we could; but the postilion had thrown away the nails, and the hammer in the chaise-box being of no great use without them, I submitted to go on.

He had not mounted half a mile higher, when coming to a flinty piece of road, the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from off his other fore-foot; I then got out of the chaise in good earnest; and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the left-hand, with a great deal to do, I prevailed upon the postilion to turn up to it. The look of the house, and of every thing about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster——It was a little farm-house surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn—and close to the house, on one side, was a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of every thing which could make plenty in a French peasant’s house—and on the other side was a little wood which furnished wherewithal to dress it. It was about eight in the evening when I got to the house—so I left the postilion to manage his point as he could—and for mine, I walk’d directly into the house.

The family consisted of an old gray-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of ’em.

They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup; a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table; and a flaggon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast—’twas a feast of love.