A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 eBook

Philip Thicknesse
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 164 pages of information about A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777.

A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 eBook

Philip Thicknesse
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 164 pages of information about A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777.
Madame la Comtesse a present;—­and why should not he?—­the price is not above four or five guineas more than his last night’s winnings;—­he offers it; and, with great difficulty and much persuasion, she accepts it; but is quite ashamed to think of the trouble he has given himself:—­but, says she, you Englishmen are so charming,—­so generous,—­and so—­so—­and looks so sweet upon him, that while her tongue faulters, egad he ventures to cover her confusion by a kiss;—­when, instead of giving him the two broad sides of her cheek, she is so off her guard, and so overcome, as to present him unawares, with a pretty handsome dash of red pomatum from her lovely pouting lips,—­and insists upon it that he sups with her, tete a tete, that very evening,—­when all this happiness is compleated.  In a few nights after, he is invited to meet the Countess, and to sup with Monsieur le Marquis, or Monsieur le Chevalier Anglais; he is feasted with high meat, and inflamed with delicious wines;—­they play after supper, and he is stript of all his money, and gives—­drafts upon his Banker for all his credit.  He visits the Countess the next day; she receives him with a civil coolness,—­is very sorry, she says,—­and wished much last night for a favourable opportunity to give him a hint, not to play after he had lost the first thousand, as she perceived luck ran hard against him:—­she is extremely mortified;—­but; as a friend, advises him to go to Lyons, or some provincial town, where he may study the language with more success, than in the hurry and noise of so great a city as Paris, and apply for further credit.  His new friends visit him no more; and he determines to take the Countess’s advice, and go on to Lyons, as he has heard the South of France is much cheaper, and there he may see what he can do, by leaving Paris, and an application to his friends in England.  But at Lyons too, some artful knave, of one nation or the other, accosts him, who has had notice of his Paris misfortunes;—­he pities him;—­and, rather than see a countryman, or a gentleman of fashion and character in distress, he would lend him fifty or a hundred pounds.  When this is done, every art is used to debauch his principles; he is initiated into a gang of genteel sharpers, and bullied, by the fear of a gaol, to connive at, or to become a party in their iniquitous society.  His good name gives a sanction for a while to their suspected reputations; and, by means of an hundred pounds so lent to this honest young man, some thousands are won from the birds of passage, who are continually passing thro’ that city to the more southern parts of France, or to Italy, Geneva, or Turin.

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A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.