was steep--a little tempting bush over the door of a
cool cottage at the foot of it, hung vibrating in full harmony with
the passions--a gentle air rustled distinctly through the
leaves--'Come--come, thirsty muleteer,--come in.'

--The muleteer was a son of Adam, I need not say a word more. He gave
the mules, each of 'em, a sound lash, and looking in the abbess's and
Margarita's faces (as he did it)--as much as to say 'here I am'--he
gave a second good crack--as much as to say to his mules, 'get on'--so
slinking behind, he enter'd the little inn at the foot of the hill.

The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow, who
thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or what was to
follow it, provided he got but his scantling of Burgundy, and a little
chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, as how
he was chief gardener to the convent of Andouillets, &c. &c. and out of
friendship for the abbess and Mademoiselle Margarita, who was only in
her noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of Savoy,
&c. &c.--and as how she had got a white swelling by her devotions--and
what a nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, &c. &c.
and that if the waters of Bourbon did not mend that leg--she might
as well be lame of both--&c. &c. &c.--He so contrived his story, as
absolutely to forget the heroine of it--and with her the little novice,
and what was a more ticklish point to be forgot than both--the two
mules; who being creatures that take advantage of the world, inasmuch
as their parents took it of them--and they not being in a condition to
return the obligation downwards (as men and women and beasts are)--they
do it side-ways, and long-ways, and back-ways--and up hill, and down
hill, and which way they can.--Philosophers, with all their ethicks,
have never considered this rightly--how should the poor muleteer, then
in his cups, consider it at all? he did not in the least--'tis time we
do; let us leave him then in the vortex of his element, the happiest and
most thoughtless of mortal men--and for a moment let us look after the
mules, the abbess, and Margarita.

By virtue of the muleteer's two last strokes the mules had gone quietly
on, following their own consciences up the hill, till they had conquer'd
about one half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty old devil,
at the turn of an angle, giving a side glance, and no muleteer behind
them,--