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The horses staled in a small brook that runs in a bottom, betwixt two hills. Arrived at Cormont. A common post. A dispute with my pupil, who is obstinate, and swayed by an unlucky prejudice. Proceed to Montreuil, where we dine on choice pigeons. A very moderate charge. No chamber-pot in the room, owing to the negligence of the maid. This is an ordinary post. Set out again for Nampont.
But he was, unfortunately, too prone and a long course of moral self-indulgence had confirmed him in it to the habit of caressing his own sensibilities; and the result of this was always to set him upon one of those attempts to be pathetic of malice prepense of which Maria of Moulines is one example, and the too celebrated dead donkey of Nampont another.
Just’s dog is not introduced for its own sake, nor like the ass at Nampont to afford opportunity for exciting humanitarian impulses, and for throwing human character into relief by confronting it with sentimental possibilities, but for the sake of a forceful, telling and immediate comparison.
It is by no means improbable, at any rate, that the dead ass of Nampont owes its presence in the Sentimental Journey to the reception met with by the live ass of Lyons in the seventh volume of Tristram Shandy. And yet what an astonishing difference between the two sketches!
The most constantly recurring form of satire is that of contradiction between the sentimental expression of elevated, universal sympathy and broader humanity and the failure to seize an immediately presented opportunity to embody desire in deed. Thus Frau Kurt, buried in “Siegwart,” refuses persistently to be disturbed by those in immediate need of a succoring hand. Pankraz and his mother while on a drive discover an old man weeping inconsolably over the death of his dog. The scene of the dead ass at Nampont occurs at once to Madame Kurt and she compares the sentimental content of these two experiences in deprivation, finding the palm of sympathy due to the melancholy dog-bewailer before her, thereby exalting the sentimental privilege of her own experience as a witness. Quoting Yorick, she cries: “Shame on the world! If men only loved one another as this man loves his dog!” At this very moment the reality of her sympathy is put to the test by the approach of a wretched woman bearing a wretched child, begging for assistance, but Frau Kurt, steeped in the delight of her sympathetic emotion, repulses her rudely. Pankraz, on going home, takes his Yorick and reads again the chapter containing the dead-ass episode; he spends much time in determining which event was the more affecting, and tears flow at the thought of both animals. In the midst of his vehement curses on “unempfindsame Menschen,” “a
Troubled with flatulences and indigestion. Mr. P. is sullen, and seems to mistake an eructation for the breaking of wind backwards. From Nampont depart for Bernay, at which place we arrive in the evening, and propose to stay all night. N.B. The two last a redouble posts, and our cattle very willing, though not strong. Sup on a delicate ragout and excellent partridges, in company with Mr.
In the second volume Timme repeats this method of satire, varying conditions only, yet forcing the matter forward, ultimately, into the grotesque comic, but again taking his cue from Yorick’s narrative about the ass at Nampont, acknowledging specifically his linking of the adventure of Madame Kurt to the episode in the Sentimental Journey.
The postilion managed the point to a miracle: by the time he had got to the foot of a steep hill, about half a league from Nampont, -he had put me out of temper with him, and then with myself, for being so. My case then required a different treatment; and a good rattling gallop would have been of real service to me. Then, prithee, get on get on, my good lad, said I.
As there was no hunting down a frightened horse in jack-boots, there remained no alternative but taking La Fleur either behind the chaise, or into it. I preferred the latter, and in half an hour we got to the post- house at Nampont. And this, said he, putting the remains of a crust into his wallet and this should have been thy portion, said he, hadst thou been alive to have shared it with me.
There is less of artistic trick, it seems to me, and more of natural foible, about Sterne's literary sentiment than Thackeray was ever willing to believe; and I can find nothing worse, though nothing better, in the dead ass of Nampont than in Maria of Moulines.
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