The Remise. Calais.

C’est bien comique, ’tis very droll, said the lady, smiling, from the reflection that this was the second time we a had been left together by a parcel of nonsensical contingencies, — c’est bien comique, said she. —

— 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.

’Tis their fort, replied the lady.

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 arrant bunglers, and in truth the worst set of marksmen that ever tried Cupid’s patience.

— To think of making love by SENTIMENTS!

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.

The lady attended as if she expected I should go on.

Consider then, Madame, continued I, laying my hand upon hers:-

That grave people hate love for the name’s sake; —

That selfish people hate it for their own; —

Hypocrites for heaven’s; —

And that all of us, both old and young, being ten times worse frightened than hurt by the very report, — what a want of knowledge in this branch of commence a man betrays, whoever 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. —

Then I solemnly declare, said the lady, blushing, you have been making love to me all this while.