' BOSWELL. Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 15.
[662] Smollett says (_Journey_, i. 147) that he had a musquetoon which
could carry eight balls. 'This piece did not fail to attract the
curiosity and admiration of the people in every place through which we
passed. The carriage no sooner halted than a crowd surrounded the man to
view the blunderbuss, which they dignified with the name of _petit
canon_. At Nuys in Burgundy, he fired it in the air, and the whole mob
dispersed, and scampered off like a flock of sheep.'
[663] Smollett does not say that he frightened the nobleman. He mistook
him for a postmaster and spoke to him very roughly. The nobleman seems
to have been good-natured; for, at the next stage, says Smollett,
'observing that one of the trunks behind was a little displaced, he
assisted my servant in adjusting it.' His name and rank were learnt
later on. _Journey_, i. p. 134.
[664] The two things did not happen in the same town. 'I am sure, writes
Thicknesse (_Travels_, ii. 147), 'there was but that single French
nobleman in this mighty kingdom, who would have submitted to such
insults as the Doctor _says_ he treated him with; nor any other town but
Sens [it was Nuys] where the firing of a gun would have so terrified the
inhabitants.
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