hat rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle
Toby, was this,--that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the gate
of St. Nicolas, extending itself from the bank of the Maes, quite up
to the great water-stop,--the ground was cut and cross cut with such a
multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all sides,--and
he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast amongst them, that
frequently he could neither get backwards or forwards to save his life;
and was oft-times obliged to give up the attack upon that very account
only.

These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle Toby Shandy more perturbations
than you would imagine; and as my father's kindness to him was
continually dragging up fresh friends and fresh enquirers,--he had but a
very uneasy task of it.

No doubt my uncle Toby had great command of himself,--and could guard
appearances, I believe, as well as most men;--yet any one may imagine,
that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into
the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down the
counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into
the ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:--He did
so;--and the little and hourly vexations, which may seem trifling and
of no account to the man who has not read Hippocrates, yet, whoever has
read Hippocrates, or Dr. James Mackenzie, and has considered well the
effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the
digestion--(Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?)--may easily
conceive what sharp paroxysms and exacerbations of his wound my uncle
Toby must have undergone upon that score only.

--My uncle Toby could not philosophize upon it;--'twas enough he felt
it was so,--and having sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three
months together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate himself.

He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and
nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other
position, when a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase
such a thing, and have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of
the fortification of the town and citadel of Namur, with its environs,
it might be a means of giving him ease.--I take notice of his desire
to have the environs along with the town and citadel, for this
reason,--because my uncle Toby's wound was got in one of the traverses,
about thirt