Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  – My ink burns my finger to try – but I fear ’twill burn my paper.

  No; – I dare not–

  But if you wish to know how the abbess of Andoüillets and a novice of her convent got over the difficulty – I’ll tell you without the least scruple.

  CHAPTER 21

  The abbess of Andoüillets, which is situated amongst the hills between Burgundy and Savoy, having a stiff knee joint, 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; then touching it with all the relics in the convent, principally the thigh-bone of the man of Lystra, who had been impotent from his youth – then wrapping it up in her veil or her rosary – then trying secular aids, anointing it with oils and fomentations – then with poultices of marsh-mallows, lilies and fenugreek – then decoctions of wild chicory, water-cresses, chervil and sweet Cecily.

  When none of these worked, she decided to try the hot baths of Bourbon – so she ordered all to be got ready for her journey. A novice of about seventeen, Margarita, was elected as her companion.

  An old carriage was ordered to be drawn out into the sun. The gardener of the convent, being chosen as muleteer, led out the two old mules, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busy darning the carriage lining and sewing on the shreds of yellow binding, which the teeth of time had unravelled. A tailor sat musically in a shed, assorting four dozen bells for the harness, whistling to each bell as he tied it on.

  – By seven the next morning, all looked spruce, and was ready at the convent gate.

  The abbess of Andoüillets, supported by Margarita the novice, advanced slowly to the carriage; both were clad in white, with their black rosaries hanging at their breasts.

  – They entered; and nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of innocence, looked in, each kissing the lily hand of the good abbess, who blessed them.

  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, good-natured, chattering, drinking fellow, who had mortgaged a month of his wages in a leather cask of wine, which he had put behind the carriage, with a large russet riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun. As the weather was hot, and he was active, walking ten times more than he rode, he found many occasions to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till all his wine was gone before the journey was half finished.

  Man is a creature of habit. The day had been sultry – the evening was delicious – the wine was generous – the Burgundian hill was steep – a little tempting bush over the door of an inn at the foot of it, rustled with a gentle air – ‘Come, thirsty muleteer – come in.’

  – The muleteer gave the mules a sound lash, and looking in the abbess’s and Margarita’s faces as if to say ‘here I am’ he gave his mules a second good crack to get them moving, and slinking behind, he entered the inn.

  The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow. He thought not of tomorrow, provided he got his wine, and a little chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, about how he was chief gardener to the convent of Andoüillets, &c. &c., and how she had got a white swelling by kneeling, and what herbs he had got for her, &c. &c., and that if the waters of Bourbon did not mend that leg, she might as well be lame, &c. &c.–

  – In telling his story, he absolutely forgot about the heroine of it – as well as the little novice – and what was more important, the two mules; who are creatures that take advantage of the world, and would rather go sideways, longways, and backwards than forwards – and up hill, down hill, and which way they can.

  The muleteer did not consider this. Let us leave him then, the happiest and most thoughtless of mortal men – and let us look for the mules, the abbess, and Margarita.

  After the muleteer’s two last strokes the mules had gone quietly on up the hill, till they had conquered about half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty old devil, glancing behind and seeing no muleteer–

  ‘By my fig!’ swore she, ‘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 stopped.

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘Get on with you,’ said the abbess.

  ‘Wh – ysh – ysh,’ cried Margarita.

  ‘Shu – shu – shu,’ shooed the abbess.

  ‘Whu – w – whew,’ whewed Margarita, pursing up her sweet lips.

  Thump – thump – thump went the abbess with the end of her cane against the bottom of the carriage–

  The old mule let out a f__.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘We are ruined and undone, my child,’ said the abbess to Margarita; ‘we shall be here all night – we shall be plundered and ravished–’

  ‘We shall be ravished,’ said Margarita, ‘as sure as a gun.’

  ‘Sancta Maria!’ cried the abbess, ‘why was I governed by this knee? why did I leave the convent? why didst thou not let thy servant die unpolluted?’

  ‘O!’ cried the novice, ‘I would rather be anywhere than in this strait!’

  ‘O my virginity! virginity!’ cried the abbess.

  ‘–inity! –inity!’ said the novice, sobbing.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘My dear mother,’ quoth the novice, recovering a little – ‘there are two certain words, which I have been told will force any horse or mule to go up a hill whether he will or no; be he never so obstinate, the moment he hears them, he obeys.’

  ‘They are magic words!’ cried the abbess in horror.

  ‘No,’ replied Margarita calmly, ‘but they are sinful in the first degree – a mortal sin – and if we are ravished and die unabsolved, we shall–’

  ‘But you may tell them to me,’ interrupted the abbess.

  ‘They cannot, my dear mother, be spoken at all; they will make one’s blood fly up into one’s face.’

  ‘But you may whisper them in my ear,’ quoth the abbess.

  Heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to send to the inn at the bottom of the hill? was there no friendly spirit who could rouse the muleteer from his banquet?

  Rouse him! – but ’tis too late – the horrid words are spoken–

  – and how to tell them with unpolluted lips – Lord, guide me–

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘All sins,’ quoth the abbess, ‘are either mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being the least of all sins – being halved, it 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 wickedness in pronouncing the syllable ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, all day long. Therefore, my dear daughter,’ continued the abbess, ‘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, just as in our complines, with ker.’

  And accordingly the abbess set off thus:

  Abbess: Bou– bou– bou–

  Margarita: –ger –ger –ger.

  And then

  Margarita: Fou– fou– fou–

  Abbess: –ker –ker –ker.

  The two mules acknowledged the words with a lash of their tails; but no more.

  ‘’Twill work by and by,’ said the novice.

  Abbess: Bou– bou– bou– bou– bou–

  Margarita: –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 Andoüillets.

  CHAPTER 26

  What a tra
ct of country have I run over! how much nearer to the warm sun have I advanced, and how many goodly cities have I seen, while you have been reading, Madam! There’s Fontainebleau, and Sens, and Joigny, and Auxerre, and Dijon, and Mâcon, and a score more upon the road to Lyons – and I might as well talk to you of so many market towns in the moon, as tell you one word about them: this chapter, if not the next too, will be 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 resignation – it would not have been difficult: or had I thought of writing upon wisdom and holiness – you would have come with a better appetite from it–

  – I wish I never had wrote it: but as I never blot anything 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–

  ‘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 to go on.

  CHAPTER 27

  All you need say of Fontainebleau, if you are asked, is that it stands about forty miles from Paris, in the middle of a large forest – that the king goes there every two or three years, with his court, to hunt – and any English gentleman of fashion may be loaned a horse to join in, taking care only not to out-gallop the king.

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

  First, because ’twill make the said nags the harder to be got; and

  Secondly, because ’tis not a word of it true. Allons!

  As for Sens – you may dispatch it in a word – ‘’Tis an archiepiscopal see.’

  For Joigny – the less one says of it the better.

  But as for Auxerre – I could go on for ever: for in my grand tour through Europe, in which my father accompanied me, 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, stayed at home at Shandy Hall to keep things right during the expedition; in which, I say, my father stopping us two days at Auxerre, his researches left me plenty to say upon it – in short, wherever my father went – but especially in this journey through France and Italy – he saw kings and courts in such strange lights – and his remarks upon the characters and customs of the countries we passed over, were so opposite to those of all other mortal men – and to crown all – the scrapes which we were perpetually getting into, because of his opinions, were so odd and tragi-comical – and the whole tour appears so different from any other tour of Europe which was ever executed – that I venture to say the fault must be mine if it be not read by all travellers, till the world stands still.

  But this rich bale is not to be opened now; except a small thread or two of it, merely to unravel the mystery of my father’s stay at Auxerre, since I have mentioned it.

  ‘We’ll go, brother Toby,’ said my father, ‘to the abbey of Saint Germain, to see these bodies which Monsieur Sequier recommends.’

  ‘I’ll go see any body,’ quoth my uncle Toby; for he was all compliance throughout the journey.

  ‘They are all mummies,’ said my father.

  ‘Then one need not shave,’ quoth my uncle.

  ‘Shave! No,’ cried my father – ‘’twill be more like family to go with our beards on.’

  So out we went to the abbey of Saint Germain.

  ‘Everything is very fine, and very rich, and very superb, and very magnificent,’ said my father to the sacristan, who was a Benedictine – ‘but we hoped to see the bodies, of which Monsieur Sequier has given the world so exact a description.’

  The sacristan bowed, and lighting a torch, he led us into the tomb of St. Heribald.

  ‘This,’ said the sacristan, laying his hand upon the tomb, ‘was a renowned prince of Bavaria, who under the reigns of Charlemagne, Louis and Charles the Bald, held great sway in the government.’

  ‘I dare say he was a gallant soldier too,’ said my uncle.

  ‘He was a monk,’ said the sacristan.

  My uncle Toby and Trim looked at each other, dismayed; but my father clapped both his hands upon his cod-piece, which was a way he had when anything hugely tickled him: for though he hated a monk worse than all the devils in hell – yet this shot hitting my uncle Toby put him into the gayest humour in the world.

  ‘And pray what do you call this gentleman?’ quoth my father sportingly.

  ‘This tomb,’ said the young Benedictine, ‘contains the bones of Saint Maxima, who came from Ravenna 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.

  ‘Martyrdom,’ replied the young Benedictine, with so humble yet decisive a tone, 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 a slow rise, brother Toby,’ quoth my father, ‘in this army of martyrs.’

  ‘A desperate slow one, your honour,’ said Trim.

  ‘Poor St. Maxima!’ said my uncle Toby low to himself.

  ‘She was one of the fairest ladies of Italy or France,’ continued the sacristan.

  ‘But who the deuce has got lain down here?’ quoth my father, pointing with his cane to a large tomb as we walked on.

  ‘It is Saint Optat, Sir,’ answered the sacristan.

  ‘And what is Saint Optat’s story?’

  ‘Saint Optat was a bishop–’

  ‘I thought so, by heaven!’ cried my father, interrupting him. ‘Saint Optat!’ and snatching out his pocket-book, he wrote it down as a new prop to his system of christian names. I will be so bold as to say that even if he had found a treasure in Saint Optat’s tomb, it would not have made him half so rich. ’Twas as successful a visit as ever was paid to the dead; and so pleased was my father 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 crossed the square.

  ‘And while you are paying that visit, brother,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘the corporal and I will mount the ramparts.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Now this is the most puzzled skein of all – for in this last chapter, I have been getting forwards in two different journeys together – for I have got entirely out of Auxerre in this journey which I am writing now, and I am only half way out of Auxerre in that which I shall write hereafter.

  In pushing for perfection, I have brought myself into such a situation as no traveller ever stood in before; for I am this moment walking across the market-place of Auxerre with my father and my uncle Toby – and also entering Lyons with my post-chaise broke into a thousand pieces – and I am moreover this instant in a handsome pavilion built by Pringello upon the banks of the Garonne, which Mons. Sligniac has lent me, and where I now sit rhapsodising on all these affairs.

  – Let me collect myself, and pursue my journey.

  CHAPTER 29

  ‘I am glad of it,’ said I, as I walked into Lyons – my chaise being all laid higgledy-piggledy with my baggage in a cart, which was moving slowly before me –

  ‘I am heartily glad,’ said I, ‘that ’tis all broke to pieces; for now I can go directly and cheaply by water to Avignon, which will carry me on a hundred and twenty miles of my journey, – and from thence, I can hire a couple of mules and cross the plains of Languedoc for almost nothing. I shall gain four hundred livres by the misfortune: and pleasure worth double the money. How fast I shall fly down the rapid Rhone, scarce seeing the ancient cities of Vienne, V
alence, and Vivieres! I shall snatch a blushing grape from the Hermitage and Côte roti, as I shoot by them!

  ‘And what a fresh spring in the blood! to behold upon the banks the castles of romance, where courteous knights have rescued the distressed, and to see the mountains, the cataracts, and Nature with all her great works about her.’

  As I went on thus, methought my chaise grew gradually smaller; the freshness of the painting was no more – the gilding lost its lustre – and the whole thing appeared so sorry! so contemptible! – that I was just about to curse it to the devil – when a pert chaise-undertaker, stepping nimbly across the street, demanded if Monsieur would have his chaise refitted?

  ‘No, no,’ said I.

  ‘Would Monsieur sell it?’

  ‘With all my soul,’ said I. ‘The iron work is worth forty livres – and the windows forty more.’

  What wealth this post-chaise brought me! This is my usual method of book-keeping – making a penny of every disaster that happens to me–

  Do, my dear Jenny, tell the world how I behaved under the most oppressive disaster which could befall me as a man proud of his manhood–

  ‘’Tis enough,’ saidst thou to me, as I stood with my garters in my hand, reflecting upon what had not happened. ‘’Tis enough, Tristram, and I am satisfied,’ thou saidst, whispering in my ear: ‘**** ** **** *** ******; **** ** **.’ – Any other man would have sunk down to the centre.

  ‘Everything is good for something,’ quoth I.

  So I should not blame fortune so often as I have done, for pelting me all my life with so many small evils: surely, I should be angry that fortune has not sent me great ones. A score of good cursed, bouncing losses, would have been as good as a pension to me.

  CHAPTER 30

  There could not be a greater vexation than to spend the best part of a day at Lyons, the most opulent city in France, enriched with antiquities – and not be able to see it. To be withheld for any reason, must be a vexation; but to be withheld by a vexation must certainly be

  VEXATION

  upon

  VEXATION.

  I had got my two dishes of milky coffee (which by the bye is excellently good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and coffee together – otherwise ’tis only coffee and milk) – and as it was only eight in the morning, and the boat did not go till noon, I had time to see some of Lyons.