The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne (short novels to read .txt) 📖

My uncle Toby’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled to it.

When Susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the circumstances which attended the murder of me,⁠—(as she called it)⁠—the blood forsook his cheeks,⁠—all accessaries in murder being principals,⁠—Trim’s conscience told him he was as much to blame as Susannah,⁠—and if the doctrine had been true, my uncle Toby had as much of the bloodshed to answer for to heaven, as either of ’em;⁠—so that neither reason or instinct, separate or together, could possibly have guided Susannah’s steps to so proper an asylum. It is in vain to leave this to the Reader’s imagination:⁠—to form any kind of hypothesis that will render these propositions feasible, he must cudgel his brains sore,⁠—and to do it without,⁠—he must have such brains as no reader ever had before him.⁠⸺⁠Why should I put them either to trial or to torture? ’Tis my own affair: I’ll explain it myself.

’Tis a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, resting with his hand upon the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,⁠—that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt;⁠⸺’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that side quite complete:⁠⸺⁠get me a couple cast, Trim.

Your honour shall have them, replied Trim, before tomorrow morning.

It was the joy of Trim’s heart,⁠—nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle Toby in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last crown, he would have sat down and hammered it into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his Master. The corporal had already,⁠—what with cutting off the ends of my uncle Toby’s spouts⁠—hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,⁠—melting down his pewter shaving-bason,⁠—and going at last, like Lewis the Fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, etc.⁠⸺⁠he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle Toby’s demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their carriages.

He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle Toby’s house long before, in the very same way,⁠—though not always in the same order; for sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,⁠—so then he began with the pullies,⁠—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became useless,⁠—and so the lead went to pot too.

⸺⁠A great moral might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not time⁠—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to the sash window.

The corporal had not taken his measures so badly in this stroke of artilleryship, but that he might have kept the matter entirely to himself, and left Susannah to have sustained the whole weight of the attack, as she could;⁠—true courage is not content with coming off so.⁠⸺⁠The corporal, whether as general or comptroller of the train,⁠—’twas no matter,⁠⸺⁠had done that, without which, as he imagined, the misfortune could never have happened,⁠—at least in Susannah’s hands;⁠⸺⁠How would your honours have behaved?⁠⸺⁠He determined at once, not to take shelter behind Susannah,⁠—but to give it; and with this resolution upon his mind, he marched upright into the parlour, to lay the whole manoeuvre before my uncle Toby.

My uncle Toby had just then been giving Yorick an account of the battle of Steenkirk, and of the strange conduct of count Solmes in ordering the foot to halt, and the horse to march where it could not act; which was directly contrary to the king’s commands, and proved the loss of the day.

There are incidents in some families so pat to the purpose of what is going to follow,⁠—they are scarce exceeded by the invention of a dramatic writer;⁠—I mean of ancient days.⁠⸻

Trim, by the help of his forefinger, laid flat upon the table, and the edge of his hand striking across it at right angles, made a shift to tell his story so, that priests and virgins might have listened to it;⁠—and the story being told,⁠—the dialogue went on as follows.

⸺⁠I would be picquetted to death, cried the corporal, as he concluded Susannah’s story, before I would suffer the woman to come to any harm,⁠—’twas my fault, an’ please your honour,⁠—not hers.

Corporal Trim, replied my uncle Toby, putting on his hat which lay upon the table,⁠⸺⁠if anything can be said to be a fault, when the service absolutely requires it should be done,⁠—’tis I certainly who deserve the blame,⁠⸺⁠you obeyed your orders.

Had count Solmes, Trim, done the same at the battle of Steenkirk, said Yorick, drolling a little upon the corporal, who had been run over by a dragoon in the retreat,⁠⸺⁠he had saved thee;⁠⸺⁠Saved! cried Trim, interrupting Yorick, and finishing the sentence for him after his own fashion,⁠⸺⁠he had saved five battalions, an’ please your reverence, every soul of them:⁠⸺⁠there was Cutts’s⁠—continued the corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand,⁠⸺⁠there was Cutts’s,⁠⸺⁠Mackay’s,⁠⸺⁠Angus’s,⁠⸺⁠Graham’s,⁠⸺⁠and Leven’s, all cut to pieces;⁠⸺⁠and so had the English lifeguards too, had it not been for some regiments upon the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy’s fire in their faces, before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket,⁠⸺⁠they’ll go to heaven for it,⁠—added Trim.⁠—Trim is right, said my uncle Toby, nodding to Yorick,⁠⸺⁠he’s perfectly right. What signified his marching the horse, continued the corporal, where the ground was so straight, that the French had such