her material comfort--was busy making provision for her to change her
quarters to Chalons. He writes to M. Panchaud, at Paris, sending fifty
pounds, and begging him to make her all further advances that might be
necessary. "I have," he says, "such entire confidence in my wife
that she spends as little as she can, though she is confined to no
particular sum ... and you may rely--in case she should draw for fifty
or a hundred pounds extraordinary--that it and every demand shall
be punctually paid, and with proper thanks; and for this the whole
Shandian family are ready to stand security." Later on, too, he writes
that "a young nobleman is now inaugurating a jaunt with me for six
weeks, about Christmas, to the Faubourg St. Germain;" and he adds--in
a tone the sincerity of which he would himself have probably found
a difficulty in gauging--"if my wife should grow worse (having had a
very poor account of her in my daughter's last), I cannot think of her
being without me; and, however expensive the journey would be, I would
fly to Avignon to administer consolation to her and my poor girl.[1]"

[Footnote 1: There can be few admirers of Sterne's genius who
would not gladly incline, whenever they find it possible, to Mr.
Fitzgerald's very indulgent estimate of his disposition. But this
is only one of many instances in which the charity of the
biographer appears to me to be, if the expression may be permitted,
unconscionable. I can, at any rate, find no warrant whatever in the
above passage for the too kindly suggestion that "Sterne was actually
negotiating a journey to Paris as 'bear-leader' to a young nobleman
(an odious office, to which he had special aversion), _in order_ that
he might with economy fly over to Avignon."]

The necessity for this flight, however, did not arise. Better
accounts of Mrs. Sterne arrived a few weeks later, and the husband's