55 pages • 1 hour read
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
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Chapters 57-65Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 57-59 Summary
The next morning—a Sunday, Yorick notices—he dresses in a new, impressive outfit and now possesses a “look of festivity in everything about him” (58). The reason for the outfit–and the hesitancy the night before, Yorick realizes— is that La Fleur would like to take the day off. La Fleur has a date to attend, so Yorick grants him his wish.
When La Fleur leaves, Yorick passes the time by entertaining himself in his room. He writes letters to his friends, including Eliza. He spends time trying to translate a fragment of a page that he finds in his room, but struggles to understand the archaic French.
Eventually, he translates the text and discovers that it is a story about a notary and his wife. It describes Paris and, in particular, the Pont Neuf, the oldest standing bridge across the River Seine. The notary is walking through a windy Paris when he is called into the home of a gentleman who has fallen on hard times; the notary is asked to draw up a will. As the gentleman begins to tell his story, one which “will rouse up every affection in nature” (62), Yorick reaches the end of the scrap of parchment and askes the returning La Fleur where the rest of it has gone.
Chapters 60-62 Summary
The other pages of the text have been used by La Fleur to wrap up a bouquet of flowers, which he then presented to the woman he was meeting. Yorick sends La Fleur back to the woman’s hotel in the hope that he can retrieve the pages. La Fleur returns a short time later and says that the bouquet passed from the woman to a string of other people, each trying to woo the other. Learning that their “misfortunes were involved together” (62), Yorick sighs and laments his luck.
Yorick next witnesses a scene in which a man approaches two women on a dark street and asks them for money. The man flatters the two women, so much so that their initial hesitance in giving him anything fades away and they end up fighting over which will be the one to give the man a reasonable sum of money.
After witnessing the scene, Yorick “stepp’d hastily after him” (64) and learns that it is the same man whose behavior had puzzled him so much the day before. The man’s flattery skills impress Yorick, whose own flattery skills are impressive enough.
Chapters 63-65 Summary
In the following days, Yorick is introduced to various members of the Parisian high society, all thanks to his connections with Count de B---. He discusses women, taxes, and other topics with the French aristocrats, all of whom seem impressed with his conversational skills. One woman, Madame de V---, sits with Yorick “for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely” (65) and he eventually warns her away from atheism, partly through the use of flattery. For three weeks, Yorick is the talk of the town. Eventually, however, this takes a toll on him and he decides to set out for Italy.
En route to Italy, Yorick stops to visit Maria, who his friend met while travelling near Moulines. Yorick meets Maria’s mother and learns that “the loss of Maria’s senses” (66) has caused her father to die of grief. Yorick finds Maria sitting under a tree with tears rolling down her cheeks.
When Maria has “come a little to herself” (67), Yorick is able to ask her whether she remembers his friend. She does, recollecting that her goat stole Mr. Shandy’s handkerchief. He listens to her story about travelling around Italy without any money and then she plays a tune on her pipe. They get up and walk together to Moulines.
Chapters 57-65 Analysis
The chapters outlined above are among the most fascinating in the book, as they represent a series of mysteries being solved (to some extent.) The most obvious of these mysteries belongs to the man Yorick sees begging in the street. The image of the old man darting from woman to woman stays with him, so much so that he actually enjoys having “a riddle to amuse [him] for the rest of the evening” (56). By the time he sees the man again, the issue is still on his mind. In Chapter 62, when Yorick solves the riddle, he thinks the resolution is monumental enough to lend the chapter its title.
This small set up and payoff is not just an interesting incident included in the travel guide. The man’s flattery skills are important, as they reflect the skills Yorick himself displays in the following chapters. When visiting with the various members of Parisian society, Yorick finds himself in full flattery mode. Just as the beggar goes hat in hand to the string of rich women, Yorick knows how to entertain and compliment the aristocrats. He acts differently with each, discussing taxes with Monsieur P--- and arguing over “the point of religion” (65) with Madame de V---. From each one, he receives high praise and rave reviews. Just like the beggar, Yorick fine-tunes his anecdotes, his conversation, and his behavior to suit the person he is trying to flatter. While the beggar might have been a mystery to Yorick, Yorick seems as much a mystery to these people.
The second important mystery in this section is contained within the parchment La Fleur hands to Yorick, containing French words Yorick then translates. In doing so, Sterne is not only revealing to the reader the depths of Yorick’s linguistic talents but hinting at the fragments of another narrative. The story is simple and cuts away just before it promises to become very interesting. It is a story which promises to “kill the humane, and touch the heart of cruelty herself with pity” (62), but the audience is never able to read the rest. The audience sympathizes with Yorick, equally as intrigued by this discovered text and equally as distraught when it is revealed that there is no more story. Sending La Fleur on a fool’s errand to track down two scraps of parchment seems almost understandable at this moment, such is the quality of the story that has been hinted at. But unlike the incident with the beggar, this mystery has no happy resolution. In a certain respect, this fractured narrative is reflected in A Sentimental Journey itself, which ends midway through a sentence, Sterne dying before he had the chance to finish the book. Just as Yorick is dismayed at the broken narrative, the reader is dismayed to learn of the severing of Sterne’s story right at one of its most interesting moments.
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By Laurence Sterne
