My uncle _Toby_ would never attempt any defence against the force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle _Toby_ leap’d up without feeling the pain upon his groin—and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother’s chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pulled out of his pocket.——The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle _Toby_ did these little offices—cut my father thro’ his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.——May my brains be knock’d out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to himself—if ever I insult this worthy soul more! C H A P. XVIII THE draw-bridge being held irreparable, _Trim_ was ordered directly to set about another——but not upon the same model: for cardinal _Alberoni_’s intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle _Toby_ rightly foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt _Spain_ and the Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all likelihood be either in _Naples_ or _Sicily_——he determined upon an _Italian_ bridge—(my uncle _Toby_, by-the-bye, was not far out of his conjectures)——but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead as far of my uncle _Toby_ in the cabinet, as my uncle _Toby_ took it of him in the field——convinced him, that if the king of _Spain_ and the Emperor went together by the ears, _England_ and _France_ and _Holland_ must, by force of their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;——and if so, he would say, the combatants, brother _Toby_, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of _Flanders;_—then what will you do with your _Italian_ bridge? —We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle _Toby_. When corporal _Trim_ had about half finished it in that style——my uncle _Toby_ found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered before. It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle _Toby_ to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;——for by this means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession——and pray of what use is the other?