the skin, and put on their smocks in my
presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked
bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting sight,
or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust:
their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when I
saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and
hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say nothing farther
concerning the rest of their persons. Neither did they at all scruple,
while I was by, to discharge what they had drank, to the quantity of at
least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above three tuns. The
handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl of
sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with
many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over
particular. But I was so much displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch
to contrive some excuse for not seeing that young lady any more.

One day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse's governess, came
and pressed them both to see an execution. It was of a man, who had
murdered one of that gentleman's intimate acquaintance. Glumdalclitch
was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against her inclination,
for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for myself, although I
abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see
something that I thought must be extraordinary. The malefactor was fixed
in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off
at one blow, with a sword of about forty feet long. The veins and
arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in
the air, that the great _jet d'eau_ at Versailles was not equal to it for
the time it lasted: and the head, when it fell on the scaffold floor,
gave such a bounce as made me start, although I was at least half an
English mile distant.

The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all
occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I
understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise
of rowing might not be convenient for my health? I answered, that I
understood both very well: for although my proper employment had been to
be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch, I was forced
to work like a common mariner. But I could not see ho