Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 5).pdf/70

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[60]

ginning. That if ever the army of martyrs was to be augmented,—or a new one raised,—I would have no hand in it, one way or t'other.

CHAP. XII.

——— But to return to my mother.

My uncle Toby's opinion, Madam, "that there could be no harm in Cornelius Gallus, the Roman prætor's lying with his wife;"—or rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:—You shall not mistake me,—I mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her fancy, you will readily conceive every word