The youth struck the note upon the tabourin—his pipe followed, and off we bounded⸺“the duce take that slit!”
The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung alternately with her brother⸺’twas a Gascoigne roundelay.
Viva la joia! Fidon la Tristessa!
The nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains an octave below them⸺
I would have given a crown to have it sew’d up— Nannette would not have given a sous — Viva la joia! was in her lips— Viva la joia! was in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us⸺She look’d amiable!⸺Why could I not live, and end my days thus? Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here⸺and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious⸺Then ’tis time to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from Lunel to Montpellier ⸺from thence to Pesçnas , Beziers ⸺I danced it along through Narbonne , Carcasson , and Castle Naudairy , till at last I danced myself into Perdrillo’s pavillion, where pulling out a paper of black lines, that I might go on straight forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle Toby’s amours⸺
I begun thus⸺