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

bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches,⁠—the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets, etc.⁠—he set the corporal to work⁠⸺⁠and sweetly went it on:⁠⸺⁠The nature of the soil,⁠—the nature of the work itself,⁠—and above all, the good-nature of my uncle Toby sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past-done deeds,⁠—left labour little else but the ceremony of the name.

When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence,⁠—it was invested,⁠—and my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel.⁠⸺⁠I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by being told, That the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the place,⁠—and that I have not left a single inch for it;⁠⸻for my uncle Toby took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle Toby’s and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no guessing)⁠⸺⁠The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work⁠⸺⁠surely they had better be printed apart,⁠⸺⁠we’ll consider the affair⁠⸺⁠so take the following sketch of them in the meantime.

XXII

When the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel⁠⸺⁠not at random, or anyhow⁠⸺⁠but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle Toby received from the daily papers,⁠—they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies.

When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,⁠⸺⁠my uncle Toby made a lodgment too,⁠⸺⁠And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined,⁠—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,⁠—and so on;⁠⸺⁠gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands.

To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,⁠—there could not have been a greater sight in the world, than, on a post-morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the duke of Marlborough, in the main body of the place,⁠—to have stood behind the hornbeam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied forth;⁠⸺⁠the one with the Gazette in his hand,⁠—the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.⁠⸺⁠What an honest triumph in my uncle Toby’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts! What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide,⁠—or leave it an inch too narrow.⁠⸺⁠But when the chamade was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts⁠—Heaven! Earth! Sea!⁠⸺⁠but what avails apostrophes?⁠⸺⁠with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.

In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,⁠—but still ’twas the torture of the happy⁠⸺⁠In this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.

The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I’ve related.

In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought he might afford the expense of four handsome drawbridges, of two of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work.

At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with portcullises:⁠⸺⁠These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.

⸺⁠The sentry-box was in case of rain.

All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.

My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing, except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which Lewis XIV from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field⁠⸺⁠But