of Tristram Shandy.  At the moment, however, he no doubt as little foresaw this as he did the delay which was to take place before any continuation of the novel appeared.  He clearly contemplated no very long absence from England.  “When I have reaped the benefit of the winter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have anything more to do with it.  Therefore, after having gone with my wife and girl to Bagneres, I shall return from whence I came.”  Already, however, one can perceive signs of his having too presumptuously marked out his future.  “My wife wants to stay another year, to save money; and this opposition of wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet ’twill not be as sweet as sugar.”  And again:  “If the snows will suffer me, I propose to spend two or three months at Barege or Bagneres; but my dear wife is against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity (though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer—­though, by-the-bye, laudable enough.  But she may talk; I will go my own way, and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject.  Who can say so much in praise of his wife?  Few, I trow.”  The tone of contemptuous amiability shows pretty clearly that the relations between husband and wife had in nowise improved.  But wives do not always lose all their influence over husbands’ wills along with the power over their affections; and it will be seen that Sterne did not make his projected winter trip to Bagneres, and that he did remain at Toulouse for a considerable part of the second year for which Mrs. Sterne desired to prolong their stay.  The place, however, was not to his taste; and he was not the first traveller in France who, delighted with the gaiety of Paris, has been disappointed at finding that French provincial towns can be as dull as dulness itself could require.  It is in the somewhat unjust mood which is commonly begotten of disillusion that Sterne discovers the cause of his ennui in “the eternal platitude of the French character,” with its “little variety and no originality at all.”  “They are very civil,” he admits, “but civility itself so thus uniform wearies and bothers me to death.  If I do not mind I shall grow most stupid and sententious.”  With such apprehensions it is not surprising that he should have eagerly welcomed any distraction that chance might offer, and in December we find him joyfully informing his chief correspondent of the period, Mr. Foley—­who to his services as Sterne’s banker seems to have added those of a most helpful and trusted friend—­that “there are a company of English strollers arrived here who are to act comedies all the Christmas, and are now busy in making dresses and preparing some of our best comedies.”  These so-called strollers were, in fact, certain members of the English colony in Toulouse, and their performances were among the first of those “amateur theatrical” entertainments which now-a-days may be said to rival the famous “morning drum-beat” of Daniel