g there--no body cared a button for me
or my remarks; so I sat me down upon a bench by the door, philosophating
upon my condition: by a better fate than usually attends me, I had not
waited half an hour, when the mistress came in to take the papilliotes
from off her hair, before she went to the May-poles--

The French women, by the bye, love May-poles, a la folie--that is, as
much as their matins--give 'em but a May-pole, whether in May, June,
July or September--they never count the times--down it goes--'tis meat,
drink, washing, and lodging to 'em--and had we but the policy, an'
please your worships (as wood is a little scarce in France), to send
them but plenty of May-poles--

The women would set them up; and when they had done, they would dance
round them (and the men for company) till they were all blind.

The wife of the chaise-vamper stepp'd in, I told you, to take the
papilliotes from off her hair--the toilet stands still for no man--so
she jerk'd off her cap, to begin with them as she open'd the door, in
doing which, one of them fell upon the ground--I instantly saw it was my
own writing--

O Seigneur! cried I--you have got all my remarks upon your head,
Madam!--J'en suis bien mortifiee, said she--'tis well, thinks I, they
have stuck there--for could they have gone deeper, they would have made
such confusion in a French woman's noddle--She had better have gone with
it unfrizled, to the day of eternity.

Tenez--said she--so without any idea of the nature of my suffering,
she took them from her curls, and put them gravely one by one into my
hat--one was twisted this way--another twisted that--ey! by my faith;
and when they are published, quoth I,--

They will be worse twisted still.

Chapter 4.XX.

And now for Lippius's clock! said I, with the air of a man, who had got
thro' all his difficulties--nothing can prevent us seeing that, and the
Chinese history, &c. except the time, said Francois--for 'tis almost
eleven--then we must speed the faster, said I, striding it away to the
cathedral.

I cannot say, in my heart, that it gave me any concern in being told
by one of the minor canons, as I was entering the west door,--That
Lippius's great clock was all out of joints, and had not gone for some
years--It will give me the more time, thought I, to peruse the Chinese
history; and besides I shall be able to give the world a better account
of the clock in its decay, than I could have done in its flourishing