Sir John Constantine: Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756Quiller-Couch, Arthur
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Sir John Constantine: Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Corsica (France) -- Fiction
"This watchman, an honest fellow with literary tastes above his
calling, was engaged towards midnight in reading M. de la Fontaine's
'Elegie aux Nymphes de Vaux,' when a sudden violent jangling fetched
him to his feet, with every hair of his head erect and separate.
Before he could collect his senses the jangling broke into a series
of terrific detonations, in the midst of which the bell in the roof
tolled one awful stroke and ceased.
"I leave to your imagination the sight that met his eyes when,
lantern in hand, he reached the mortuary door. The collected
remains, promiscuously interred next day by the municipality of
Montpellier, were, at the request of a brother-in-law of Mrs.
Robinson, and through the good offices of Mr. Locke, subsequently
exhumed and despatched to Pewsey, where they rest under a suitable
inscription, locally attributed to the pen of Mr. Locke. His
admirers will recognize in the concluding lines that conscientious
exactitude which ever distinguished the philosopher. They run--
"'And to the Memory of one
FRITZ (? Sempach)
a Humble Native of Alsace
whose remains, by Destiny commingled
with the foregoing,
are for convenience here deposited.
II. Kings iv. 39.'
"But the extraordinary part of my story, gentlemen, remains to be
told. Some six weeks ago, happening, in search of a theatrical
engagement, to find myself in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, I fell
in with a pedestrian whose affability of accost invited me to a
closer acquaintance. He introduced himself as the Reverend Josias
Micklethwaite, a student of Nature, and more particularly of the
mosses and lichens of Wilts. Our liking (I have reason to believe)
was mutual, and we spent a delightful ten days in tracking up
together the course of the Wiltshire Avon, and afterwards in
perambulating the famous forest of Savernake. Here, I regret to say,
a trifling request--for the loan of five shillings, a temporary
accommodation--led to a misunderstanding, and put a period to our
companionship, and I remain his debtor but for some hours of
profitable intercourse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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