Behind them was the dull, waning glow of the wood fire on the hearth
which had been the centre of all their hopes and joys; before them the
dim, dark country, and the woe-stricken faces of their neighbours, and
the moving soldiery with their torches, and the quivering forms of the
half-dying horses.

Suddenly a voice arose from the armed mass: "Bring me the peasant
hither."

Bernadou was seized by several hands and forced and dragged from his
door out to the place where the leader of the uhlans sat on a white
charger that shook and snorted blood in its exhaustion. Bernadou cast
off the alien grasp that held him, and stood erect before his foes. He
was no longer pale, and his eyes were clear and steadfast.

"You look less a fool than the rest," said the Prussian commander. "You
know this country well?"

"Well!" The country in whose fields and woodlands he had wandered
from his infancy, and whose every meadow-path and wayside tree and
flower-sown brook he knew by heart as a lover knows the lines of his
mistress's face!

"You have arms here?" pursued the German.

"We had."

"What have you done with them?"

"If I had had my way, you would not need ask. You would have felt them."

The Prussian looked at him keenly, doing homage to the boldness of the
answer. "Will you confess where they are?"

"No."

"You know the penalty for concealment of arms is death?"

"You have made it so."

"We have, and Prussian will is French law. You are a bold man; you merit
death. But still, you know the country well?"

Bernadou smiled, as a mother might smile were any foolish enough to ask
her if she remembered the look her dead child's face had worn.

"If you know it well," pursued the Prussian, "I will give you a chance.
Lay hold of my stirrup-leather and be lashed to it, and show me straight
as the crow flies to where the weapons are hidden. If you do, I will
leave you your life. If you do not--"

"If I do not?"

"You will be shot."

Bernadou was silent; his eyes glanced through the mass of soldiers
to the little cottage under the trees opposite. The two there were
straining to behold him, but the soldiers pushed them back, so that in
the flare of the torches they could not see, nor in the tumult hear. He
thanked God for it.

"Your choice?" asked the uhlan, impatiently, after a moment's pause.

Bernadou's lips were white, but they did not tremble as he answered,
"I am no traitor." And his eyes, as he spoke, went softly to the little
porch where the light glowed from that hearth beside which he would
never again sit with the creatures he loved around him.

The German looked at him. "Is that a boast, or a fact?"

"I am no traitor," Bernadou answered, simply, once more.

The Prussian gave a sign to his troopers. There was the sharp report of
a double shot, and Bernadou fell dead. One bullet had pierced his brain,
the other was bedded in his lungs. The soldiers kicked aside the warm
and quivering body. It was only a peasant killed!

With a shriek that rose above the roar of the wind, and cut like steel
to every human heart that beat there, Reine Allix forced her way through
the throng, and fell on her knees beside him, and caught him in her
arms, and laid his head upon her breast, where he had used to sleep his
softest sleep in infancy and childhood. "It is God's will! it is God's
will!" she muttered; and then she laughed--a laugh so terrible that the
blood of the boldest there ran cold.

Margot followed her and looked, and stood dry-eyed and silent; then
flung herself and the child she carried in her arms beneath the hoof
of the white charger. "End your work!" she shrieked to them. "You have
killed him--kill us. Have you not mercy enough for that?"

The horse, terrified and snorting blood, plunged and trampled the
ground; his fore foot struck the child's golden head and stamped its
face out of all human likeness. Some peasants pulled Margot from the
lashing hoofs; she was quite dead, though neither wound nor bruise was
on her.

Reine Allix neither looked nor paused. With all her strength she had
begun to drag the body of Bernadou across the threshold of his house.
"He shall lie at home, he shall lie at home," she muttered. She would
not believe that already he was dead. With all the force of her earliest
womanhood she lifted him, and half drew, half bore him into the house
that he had loved, and laid him down upon the hearth, and knelt by him,
caressing him as though he were once more a child, and saying softly,
"Hush!"--for her mind was gone, and she fancied that he only slept.

Without, the tumult of the soldiery increased. They found the arms
hidden under the altar on the hill; they seized five peasants to slay
them for the dire offence. The men struggled, and would not go as the
sheep to the shambles. They were shot down in the street, before the
eyes of their children. Then the order was given to fire the place in
punishment, and leave it to its fate. The torches were flung with a
laugh on the dry thatched roofs; brands snatched from the house fires
on the hearths were tossed among the dwelling-houses and the barns. The
straw and timber flared alight like tow.

An old man, her nearest neighbour, rushed to the cottage of Reine Allix
and seized her by the arm. "They fire the Berceau," he screamed. "Quick!
quick! or you will be burned alive!"

Reine Allix looked up with a smile. "Be quiet! Do you not see! He
sleeps."

The old man shook her, implored her, strove to drag her away; in
desperation pointed to the roof above, which was already in flames.

Reine Allix looked. At that sight her mind cleared, and regained
consciousness; she remembered all, she understood all; she knew that he
was dead. "Go in peace and save yourself," she said, in the old, sweet,
strong tone of an earlier day. "As for me, I am very old. I and my dead
will stay together at home."

The man fled, and left her to her choice.

The great curled flames and the livid vapours closed around her; she
never moved. The death was fierce, but swift, and even in death she and
the one whom she had loved and reared were not divided. The end soon
came. From hill to hill the Berceau de Dieu broke into flames. The
village was a lake of fire, into which the statue of the Christ, burning
and reeling, fell. Some few peasants, with their wives and children,
fled to the woods, and there escaped one torture to perish more slowly
of cold and famine. All other things perished. The rapid stream of the
flame licked up all there was in its path. The bare trees raised their
leafless branches, on fire at a thousand points. The stores of corn
and fruit were lapped by millions of crimson tongues. The pigeons flew
screaming from their roosts, and sank into the smoke. The dogs were
suffocated on the thresholds they had guarded all their lives. The sheep
ran bleating with the wool burning on their living bodies. The little
caged birds fluttered helpless, and then dropped, scorched to cinders.
The aged and the sick were stifled in their beds. All things perished.

The Berceau de Dieu was as one vast furnace, in which every living
creature was caught and consumed and changed to ashes. The tide of war
has rolled on, and left it a blackened waste, a smoking ruin, wherein
not so much as a mouse may creep or a bird may nestle. It is gone, and
its place can know it nevermore.

Nevermore. But who is there to care? It was but as a leaf which the
great storm swept away as it passed.




THE TRAVELLER'S STORY OF A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED, By Wilkie Collins




PROLOGUE TO THE FIRST STORY

Before I begin, by the aid of my wife's patient attention and ready pen,
to relate any of the stories which I have heard at various times from
persons whose likenesses I have been employed to take, it will not be
amiss if I try to secure the reader's interest in the following pages by
briefly explaining how I became possessed of the narrative matter which
they contain.

Of myself I have nothing to say, but that I have followed the profession
of a travelling portrait-painter for the last fifteen years. The pursuit
of my calling has not only led me all through England, but has taken
me twice to Scotland and once to Ireland. In moving from district to
district, I am never guided beforehand by any settled plan. Sometimes
the letters of recommendation which I get from persons who are satisfied
with the work I have done for them determine the direction in which I
travel. Sometimes I hear of a new neighbourhood in which there is no
resident artist of ability, and remove thither on speculation. Sometimes
my friends among the picture-dealers say a good word on my behalf to
their rich customers, and so pave the way for me in the large towns.
Sometimes my prosperous and famous brother artists, hearing of small
commissions which it is not worth their while to accept, mention my
name, and procure me introductions to pleasant country houses. Thus I
get on, now in one way and now in another, not winning a reputation or
making a fortune, but happier, perhaps, on the whole, than many men who
have got both the one and the other. So, at least, I try to think now,
though I started in my youth with as high an ambition as the best of
them. Thank God, it is not my business here to speak of past times and
their disappointments. A twinge of the old hopeless heartache comes over
me sometimes still, when I think of my student days.

One peculiarity of my present way of life is, that it brings me into
contact with all sorts of characters. I almost feel, by this time, as if
I had painted every civilised variety of the human race. Upon the whole,
my experience of the world, rough as it has been, has not taught me to
think unkindly of my fellow-creatures. I have certainly received such
treatment at the hands of some of my sitters as I could not describe
without saddening and shocking any kind-hearted reader; but, taking one
year and one place with another, I have cause to remember with gratitude
and respect, sometimes even with friendship and affection, a very large
proportion of the numerous persons who have employed me.

Some of the results of my experience are curious in a moral point of
view. For example, I have found women almost uniformly less delicate in
asking me about my terms, and less generous in remunerating me for my
services, than men. On the other hand, men, within my knowledge, are
decidedly vainer of their personal attractions, and more vexatiously
anxious to have them done full justice to on canvas, than women. Taking
both sexes together, I have found young people, for the most part, more
gentle, more reasonable, and more considerate than old. And, summing up,
in a general way, my experience of different ranks (which extends, let
me premise, all the way down from peers to publicans), I have met
with most of my formal and ungracious receptions among rich people of
uncertain social standing; the highest classes and the lowest among
my employers almost always contrive--in widely different ways, of
course--to make me feel at home as soon as I enter their houses.

The one great obstacle that I have to contend against in the practice
of my profession is not, as some persons may imagine, the difficulty
of making my sitters keep their heads still while I paint them, but
the difficulty of getting them to preserve the natural look and the
every-day peculiarities of dress and manner. People will assume
an expression, will brush up their hair, will correct any little
characteristic carelessness in their apparel--will, in short, when they
want to have their likenesses taken, look as if they were sitting for
their pictures. If I paint them under these artificial circumstances,
I fail, of course, to present them in their habitual aspect; and my
portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter
always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his
handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common
workaday pen, not his best small text traced laboriously with the finest
procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is,
after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character
recognisably presented to the view of others.

Experience, after repeated trials, has proved to me that the only way
of getting sitters who persist in assuming a set look to resume their
habitual expression is to lead them into talking about some subject
in which they are greatly interested. If I can only beguile them into
speaking earnestly, no matter on what topic, I am sure of recovering
their natural expression; sure of seeing all the little precious
every-day peculiarities of the man or woman peep out, one after another,
quite unawares. The long maundering stories about nothing, the wearisome
recitals of petty grievances, the local anecdotes unrelieved by the
faintest suspicion of anything like general interest, which I have been
condemned to hear, as a consequence of thawing the ice off the features
of formal sitters by the method just described, would fill hundreds of
volumes and promote the repose of thousands of readers. On the other
hand, if I have suffered under the tediousness of the many, I have not
been without my compensating gains from the wisdom and experience of the
few. To some of my sitters I have been indebted for information which
has enlarged my mind, to some for advice which has lightened my heart,
to some for narratives of strange adventure which riveted my attention
at the time, which have served to interest and amuse my fireside circle
for many years past, and which are now, I would fain hope, destined to
make kind friends for me among a wider audience than any that I have yet
addressed.

Singularly enough, almost all the best stories that I have heard from my
sitters have been told by accident. I only remember two cases in which
a story was volunteered to me; and, although I have often tried the
experiment, I cannot call to mind even a single instance in which
leading questions (as lawyers call them) on my part, addressed to a
sitter, ever produced any result worth recording. Over and over again
I have been disastrously successful in encouraging dull people to weary
me. But the clever people who have something interesting to say seem,
so far as I have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant than
chance. For every story, excepting one, I have been indebted, in
the first instance, to the capricious influence of the same chance.
Something my sitter has seen about me, something I have remarked in
my sitter, or in the room in which I take the likeness, or in the
neighbourhood through which I pass on my way to work, has suggested the
necessary association, or has started the right train of recollections,
and then the story appeared to begin of its own accord. Occasionally
the most casual notice, on my part, of some very unpromising object has
smoothed the way for the relation of a long and interesting narrative.
I first heard one of the most dramatic stories merely through being
carelessly inquisitive to know the history of a stuffed poodle-dog.

It is thus not without reason that I lay some stress on the
desirableness of prefacing the following narrative by a brief account of
the curious manner in which I became possessed of it. As to my capacity
for repeating the story correctly, I can answer for it that my memory
may be trusted. I may claim it as a merit, because it is, after all,
a mechanical one, that I forget nothing, and that I can call long-past
conversations and events as readily to my recollection as if they had
happened but a few weeks ago. Of two things at least I feel tolerably
certain before-hand, in meditating over its contents: first, that I can
repeat correctly all that I have heard; and, secondly, that I have never
missed anything worth hearing when my sitters were addressing me on an
interesting subject. Although I cannot take the lead in talking while
I am engaged in painting, I can listen while others speak, and work all
the better for it.

So much in the way of general preface to the pages for which I am about
to ask the reader's attention. Let me now advance to particulars, and
describe how I came to hear the story. I begin with it because it is
the story that I have oftenest "rehearsed," to borrow a phrase from the
stage. Wherever I go, I am sooner or later sure to tell it. Only last
night I was persuaded into repeating it once more by the inhabitants of
the farm-house in which I am now staying.


Not many years ago, on returning from a short holiday visit to a friend
settled in Paris, I found professional letters awaiting me at my agent's
in London, which required my immediate presence in Liverpool. Without
stopping to unpack, I proceeded by the first conveyance to my
new destination; and, calling at the picture-dealer's shop where
portrait-painting engagements were received for me, found to my great
satisfaction that I had remunerative employment in prospect, in and
about Liverpool, for at least two months to come. I was putting up my
letters in high spirits, and was just leaving the picture-dealer's shop
to look out for comfortable lodgings, when I was met at the door by the
landlord of one of the largest hotels in Liverpool--an old acquaintance
whom I had known as manager of a tavern in London in my student days.

"Mr. Kerby!" he exclaimed, in great astonishment. "What an unexpected
meeting! the last man in the world whom I expected to see, and yet the
very man whose services I want to make use of!"

"What! more work for me?" said I. "Are all the people in Liverpool going
to have their portraits painted?"

"I only know of one," replied the landlord, "a gentleman staying at my
hotel, who wants a chalk drawing done of him. I was on my way here to
inquire for any artist whom our picture-dealing friend could recommend.
How glad I am that I met you before I had committed myself to employing
a stranger!"

"Is this likeness wanted at once?" I asked, thinking of the number of
engagements that I had already got in my pocket.

"Immediately--to-day--this very hour, if possible," said the landlord.
"Mr. Faulkner, the gentleman I am speaking of, was to have sailed
yesterday for the Brazils from this place; but the wind shifted last
night to the wrong quarter, and he came ashore again this morning.
He may, of course, be detained here for some time; but he may also be
called on board ship at half an hour's notice, if the wind shifts back
again in the right direction. This uncertainty makes it a matter of
importance that the likeness should be begun immediately. Undertake it
if you possibly can, for Mr. Faulkner is a liberal gentleman, who is
sure to give you your own terms."

I reflected for a minute or two. The portrait was only wanted in chalk,
and would not take long; besides, I might finish it in the evening, if
my other engagements pressed hard upon me in the daytime. Why not leave
my luggage at the picture-dealer's, put off looking for lodgings till
night, and secure the new commission boldly by going back at once with
the landlord to the hotel? I decided on following this course almost as
soon as the idea occurred to me; put my chalks in my pocket, and a sheet
of drawing-paper in the first of my portfolios that came to hand; and
so presented myself before Mr. Faulkner, ready to take his likeness,
literally at five minutes' notice.

I found him a very pleasant, intelligent man, young and handsome. He had
been a great traveller, had visited all the wonders of the East, and
was now about to explore the wilds of the vast South American continent.
Thus much he told me good-humouredly and unconstrainedly while I was
preparing my drawing materials.

As soon as I had put him in the right light and position, and had seated
myself opposite to him, he changed the subject of conversation, and
asked me, a little confusedly as I thought, if it was not a customary
practice among portrait-painters to gloss over the faults in their
sitters' faces, and to make as much as possible of any good points which
their features might possess.

"Certainly," I answered. "You have described the whole art and mystery
of successful portrait-painting in a few words."

"May I beg, then," said he, "that you will depart from the usual
practice in my case, and draw me with all my defects, exactly as I am?
The fact is," he went on, after a moment's pause, "the likeness you are
now preparing to take is intended for my mother; my roving disposition
makes me a great anxiety to her, and she parted from me this last time
very sadly and unwillingly. I don't know how the idea came into my head,
but it struck me this morning that I could not better employ the time
while I was delayed here on shore than by getting my likeness done
to send to her as a keepsake. She has no portrait of me since I was a
child, and she is sure to value a drawing of me more than anything else
I could send to her. I only trouble you with this explanation to prove
that I am really sincere in my wish to be drawn unflatteringly, exactly
as I am."

Secretly respecting and admiring him for what he had just said, I
promised that his directions should be implicitly followed, and began
to work immediately. Before I had pursued my occupation for ten minutes,
the conversation began to flag, and the usual obstacle to my success
with a sitter gradually set itself up between us. Quite unconsciously,
of course, Mr. Faulkner stiffened his neck, shut his mouth, and
contracted his eyebrows--evidently under the impression that he was
facilitating the process of taking his portrait by making his face as
like a lifeless mask as possible. All traces of his natural animated
expression were fast disappearing, and he was beginning to change into a
heavy and rather melancholy-looking man.

This complete alteration was of no great consequence so long as I was
only engaged in drawing the outline of his face and the general form of
his features. I accordingly worked on doggedly for more than an hour;
then left off to point my chalks again, and to give my sitter a few
minutes' rest. Thus far the likeness had not suffered through Mr.
Faulkner's unfortunate notion of the right way of sitting for his
portrait; but the time of difficulty, as I well knew, was to come.
It was impossible for me to think of putting any expression into the
drawing unless I could contrive some means, when he resumed his chair,
of making him look like himself again. "I will talk to him about foreign
parts," thought I, "and try if I can't make him forget that he is
sitting for his picture in that way."

While I was pointing my chalks, Mr. Faulkner was walking up and down
the room. He chanced to see the portfolio I had brought with me leaning
against the wall, and asked if there were any sketches in it. I told him
there were a few which I had made during my recent stay in Paris. "In
Paris?" he repeated, with a look of interest; "may I see them?"

I gave him the permission he asked as a matter of course. Sitting down,
he took the portfolio on his knee, and began to look through it. He
turned over the first five sketches rapidly enough; but when he came to
the sixth I saw his face flush directly, and observed that he took the
drawing out of the portfolio, carried it to the window, and remained
silently absorbed in the contemplation of it for full five minutes.
After that he turned round to me, and asked very anxiously if I had any
objection to parting with that sketch.

It was the least interesting drawing of the collection--merely a view
in one of the streets running by the backs of the houses in the Palais
Royal. Some four or five of these houses were comprised in the view,
which was of no particular use to me in any way, and which was too
valueless, as a work of art, for me to think of selling it. I begged his
acceptance of it at once. He thanked me quite warmly; and then, seeing
that I looked a little surprised at the odd selection he had made from
my sketches, laughingly asked me if I could guess why he had been so
anxious to become possessed of the view which I had given him.

"Probably," I answered, "there is some remarkable historical association
connected with that street at the back of the Palais Royal, of which I
am ignorant."

"No," said Mr. Faulkner; "at least none that _I_ know of. The only
association connected with the place in _my_ mind is a purely personal
association. Look at this house in your drawing--the house with the
water-pipe running down it from top to bottom. I once passed a night
there--a night I shall never forget to the day of my death. I have had
some awkward travelling adventures in my time; but _that_ adventure!
Well, never mind, suppose we begin the sitting. I make but a bad return
for your kindness in giving me the sketch by thus wasting your time in
mere talk."

"Come! come!" thought I, as he went back to the sitter's chair, "I shall
see your natural expression on your face if I can only get you to talk
about that adventure." It was easy enough to lead him in the right
direction. At the first hint from me, he returned to the subject of the
house in the back street. Without, I hope, showing any undue curiosity,
I contrived to let him see that I felt a deep interest in everything he
now said. After two or three preliminary hesitations, he at last, to
my great joy, fairly started on the narrative of his adventure. In the
interest of his subject he soon completely forgot that he was sitting
for his portrait,--the very expression that I wanted came over his
face,--and my drawing proceeded toward completion, in the right
direction, and to the best purpose. At every fresh touch I felt more and
more certain that I was now getting the better of my grand difficulty;
and I enjoyed the additional gratification of having my work lightened
by the recital of a true story, which possessed, in my estimation, all
the excitement of the most exciting romance.

This, as I recollect it, is how Mr. Faulkner told me his adventure.




THE TRAVELLER'S STORY OF A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED

Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be
staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then,
and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of
our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighbourhood of
the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake
ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati's; but his suggestion
was not to my taste. I knew Frascati's, as the French saying is, by
heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for
amusement's sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly
tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social
anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. "For Heaven's sake," said I
to my friend, "let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine,
blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming with no false gingerbread glitter
thrown over it all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati's, to a
house where they don't mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a
man with no coat, ragged or otherwise." "Very well," said my friend, "we
needn't go out of the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want.
Here's the place just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report,
as you could possibly wish to see." In another minute we arrived at the
door and entered the house, the back of which you have drawn in your
sketch.

When we got upstairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the
doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not
find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were who looked
up at us on our entrance, they were all types--lamentably true types--of
their respective classes.

We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something
worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all
blackguardism--here there was nothing but tragedy--mute, weird tragedy.
The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young
man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards,
never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece
of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how
often red--never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture
eyes and the darned great-coat, who had lost his last sou, and still
looked on desperately, after he could play no longer--never spoke. Even
the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and
thickened in the atmosphere of the room. I had entered the place to
laugh, but the spectacle before me was something to weep over. I soon
found it necessary to take refuge in excitement from the depression
of spirits which was fast stealing on me. Unfortunately I sought the
nearest excitement, by going to the table and beginning to play. Still
more unfortunately, as the event will show, I won--won prodigiously;
won incredibly; won at such a rate that the regular players at the table
crowded round me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious
eyes, whispered to one another that the English stranger was going to
break the bank.

The game was Rouge et Noir. I had played at it in every city in
Europe, without, however, the care or the wish to study the Theory of
Chances--that philosopher's stone of all gamblers! And a gambler, in the
strict sense of the word, I had never been. I was heart-whole from the
corroding passion for play. My gaming was a mere idle amusement. I never
resorted to it by necessity, because I never knew what it was to want
money. I never practised it so incessantly as to lose more than I could
afford, or to gain more than I could coolly pocket without being thrown
off my balance by my good luck. In short, I had hitherto
frequented gambling-tables--just as I frequented ball-rooms and
opera-houses--because they amused me, and because I had nothing better
to do with my leisure hours.

But on this occasion it was very different--now, for the first time in
my life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My success
first bewildered, and then, in the most literal meaning of the word,
intoxicated me. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless true,
that I only lost when I attempted to estimate chances, and played
according to previous calculation. If I left everything to luck, and
staked without any care or consideration, I was sure to win--to win in
the face of every recognized probability in favour of the bank. At first
some of the men present ventured their money safely enough on my colour;
but I speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk.
One after another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked on at
my game.

Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher, and still won. The
excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted
by a deep-muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different
languages, every time the gold was shovelled across to my side of the
table--even the imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in
a (French) fury of astonishment at my success. But one man present
preserved his self-possession, and that man was my friend. He came to my
side, and whispering in English, begged me to leave the place, satisfied
with what I had already gained. I must do him the justice to say that he
repeated his warnings and entreaties several times, and only left me
and went away after I had rejected his advice (I was to all intents and
purposes gambling drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible for him
to address me again that night.

Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: "Permit me,
my dear sir--permit me to restore to their proper place two napoleons
which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir! I pledge you my word of
honour, as an old soldier, in the course of my long experience in this
sort of thing, I never saw such luck as yours--never! Go on, sir--_Sacre
mille bombes!_ Go on boldly, and break the bank!"

I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate
civility, a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout. If I had
been in my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as
being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling
bloodshot eyes, mangy moustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed
a barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest
pair of hands I ever saw--even in France. These little personal
peculiarities exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the
mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to
"fraternize" with anybody who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the
old soldier's offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore
he was the honestest fellow in the world--the most glorious relic of the
Grand Army that I had ever met with. "Go on!" cried my military friend,
snapping his fingers in ecstasy--"Go on, and win! Break the bank--_Mille
tonnerres!_ my gallant English comrade, break the bank!"

And I _did_ go on--went on at such a rate, that in another quarter of an
hour the croupier called out, "Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for
to-night." All the notes, and all the gold in that "bank" now lay in a
heap under my hands; the whole floating capital of the gambling-house
was waiting to pour into my pockets!

"Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir," said the
old soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap of gold. "Tie
it up, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the Grand Army; your
winnings are too heavy for any breeches-pockets that ever were sewed.
There! that's it--shovel them in, notes and all! _Credie!_ what luck!
Stop! another napoleon on the floor! Ah! _sacre petit polisson de
Napoleon!_ have I found thee at last? Now then, sir--two tight double
knots each way with your honourable permission, and the money's safe.
Feel it! feel it, fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon-ball--_Ah,
bah!_ if they had only fired such cannon-balls at us at Austerlitz--_nom
d'une pipe!_ if they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as
an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I ask what?
Simply this: to entreat my valued English friend to drink a bottle of
champagne with me, and toast the goddess Fortune in foaming goblets
before we part!"

"Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all
means! An English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah! Another
English cheer for the goddess Fortune! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

"Bravo! the Englishman; the amiable, gracious Englishman, in whose veins
circulates the vivacious blood of France! Another glass? _Ah, bah!_--the
bottle is empty! Never mind! _Vive le vin!_ I, the old soldier, order
another bottle, and half a pound of bonbons with it!"

"No, no, ex-brave; never--ancient grenadier! _Your_ bottle last time; my
bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army! the great Napoleon!
the present company! the croupier! the honest croupier's wife and
daughters--if he has any! the Ladies generally! everybody in the world!"

By the time the second bottle of champagne was emptied, I felt as if I
had been drinking liquid fire--my brain seemed all aflame. No excess in
wine had ever had this effect on me before in my life. Was it the result
of a stimulant acting upon my system when I was in a highly excited
state? Was my stomach in a particularly disordered condition? Or was the
champagne amazingly strong?

"Ex-brave of the French Army!" cried I, in a mad state of exhilaration,
"I am on fire! how are you? You have set me on fire. Do you hear, my
hero of Austerlitz? Let us have a third bottle of champagne to put the
flame out!"

The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I
expected to see them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty
forefinger by the side of his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated "Coffee!"
and immediately ran off into an inner room.

The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a magical
effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose
to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but
finding that my new friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from
getting dead drunk, had now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on
my winnings. Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away
in a body. When the old soldier returned, and sat down again opposite to
me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I could see the croupier,
in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating his supper in
solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.

A sudden change, too, had come over the "ex-brave". He assumed a
portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his speech was
ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no finger-snapping, enlivened by no
apostrophes or exclamations.

"Listen, my dear sir," said he, in mysteriously confidential
tones--"listen to an old soldier's advice. I have been to the mistress
of the house (a very charming woman, with a genius for cookery!) to
impress on her the necessity of making us some particularly strong and
good coffee. You must drink this coffee in order to get rid of your
little amiable exaltation of spirits before you think of going home--you
_must_, my good and gracious friend! With all that money to take home
to-night, it is a sacred duty to yourself to have your wits about you.
You are known to be a winner to an enormous extent by several gentlemen
present to-night, who, in a certain point of view, are very worthy and
excellent fellows; but they are mortal men, my dear sir, and they have
their amiable weaknesses. Need I say more? Ah, no, no! you understand
me! Now, this is what you must do--send for a cabriolet when you feel
quite well again--draw up all the windows when you get into it--and
tell the driver to take you home only through the large and well-lighted
thoroughfares. Do this; and you and your money will be safe. Do this;
and to-morrow you will thank an old soldier for giving you a word of
honest advice."

Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones, the
coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed
me one of the cups with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it
off at a draught. Almost instantly afterwards, I was seized with a fit
of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The
room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to
be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a
steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a
feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose
from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered
out that I felt dreadfully unwell--so unwell that I did not know how I
was to get home.

"My dear friend," answered the old soldier--and even his voice seemed to
be bobbing up and down as he spoke--"my dear friend, it would be madness
to go home in _your_ state; you would be sure to lose your money; you
might be robbed and murdered with the greatest ease. _I_ am going to
sleep here; do you sleep here, too--they make up capital beds in this
house--take one; sleep off the effects of the wine, and go home safely
with your winnings to-morrow--to-morrow, in broad daylight."

I had but two ideas left: one, that I must never let go hold of my
handkerchief full of money; the other, that I must lie down somewhere
immediately, and fall off into a comfortable sleep. So I agreed to the
proposal about the bed, and took the offered arm of the old soldier,
carrying my money with my disengaged hand. Preceded by the croupier, we
passed along some passages and up a flight of stairs into the bedroom
which I was to occupy. The ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand,
proposed that we should breakfast together, and then, followed by the
croupier, left me for the night.

I ran to the wash-hand stand; drank some of the water in my jug; poured
the rest out, and plunged my face into it; then sat down in a chair and
tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs,
from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the
apartment I now occupied, the almost equally refreshing change for
my eyes, from the glaring gaslights of the "salon" to the dim, quiet
flicker of one bedroom candle, aided wonderfully the restorative effects
of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like
a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping
all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still greater risk of
trying to get out after the house was closed, and of going home alone at
night through the streets of Paris with a large sum of money about me.
I had slept in worse places than this on my travels; so I determined
to lock, bolt, and barricade my door, and take my chance till the next
morning.

Accordingly, I secured myself against all intrusion; looked under the
bed, and into the cupboard; tried the fastening of the window; and then,
satisfied that I had taken every proper precaution, pulled off my upper
clothing, put my light, which was a dim one, on the hearth among a
feathery litter of wood-ashes, and got into bed, with the handkerchief
full of money under my pillow.

I soon felt not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I could not
even close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve
in my body trembled--every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally
sharpened. I tossed and rolled, and tried every kind of position, and
perseveringly sought out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no
purpose. Now I thrust my arms over the clothes; now I poked them under
the clothes; now I violently shot my legs straight out down to the
bottom of the bed; now I convulsively coiled them up as near my chin
as they would go; now I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to
the cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now
I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the
board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain;
I groaned with vexation as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night.

What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some
method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition
to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brain with forebodings of
every possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in
suffering all conceivable varieties of nervous terror.

I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room--which was
brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window--to
see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at all
clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a
remembrance of Le Maistre's delightful little book, "Voyage autour de ma
Chambre," occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author,
and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my
wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture
I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of
associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be
made to call forth.

In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found
it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and
thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre's fanciful
track--or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about the room at the
different articles of furniture, and did nothing more.

There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things
in the world to meet with in Paris--yes, a thoroughly clumsy British
four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz--the regular fringed
valance all round--the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which
I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without
particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then
there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had
spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and
more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs, with my coat,
waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large elbow-chair covered
with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and shirt collar thrown over the
back. Then a chest of drawers with two of the brass handles off, and a
tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the
top. Then the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass,
and a very large pincushion. Then the window--an unusually large window.
Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It
was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of
towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading
his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward--it might be at some
tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the
appearance of thoroughly deserving it.

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward too--at
the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and
I looked back at the picture. I counted the feathers in the man's
hat--they stood out in relief--three white, two green. I observed the
crown of his hat, which was of conical shape, according to the fashion
supposed to have been favoured by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was
looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither
astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was
going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession
of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers
again--three white, two green.

While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual
employment, my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight
shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in
England--the night after a picnic party in a Welsh valley. Every
incident of the drive homeward, through lovely scenery, which the
moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance, though I
had never given the picnic a thought for years; though, if I had _tried_
to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled little or nothing of
that scene long past. Of all the wonderful faculties that help to tell
us we are immortal, which speaks the sublime truth more eloquently than
memory? Here was I, in a strange house of the most suspicious character,
in a situation of uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to
make the cool exercise of my recollection almost out of the question;
nevertheless, remembering, quite involuntarily, places, people,
conversations, minute circumstances of every kind, which I had thought
forgotten for ever; which I could not possibly have recalled at will,
even under the most favourable auspices. And what cause had produced
in a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect?
Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.

I was still thinking of the picnic--of our merriment on the drive
home--of the sentimental young lady who _would quote_ "Childe Harold"
because it was moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past
amusements, when, in an instant, the thread on which my memories hung
snapped asunder; my attention immediately came back to present things
more vividly than ever, and I found myself, I neither knew why nor
wherefore, looking hard at the picture again.

Looking for what?

Good God! the man had pulled his hat down on his brows! No! the hat
itself was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers--three
white, two green? Not there! In place of the hat and feathers, what
dusky object was it that now hid his forehead, his eyes, his shading
hand?

Was the bed moving?

I turned on my back and looked up. Was I mad? drunk? dreaming? giddy
again? or was the top of the bed really moving down--sinking slowly,
regularly, silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its
length and breadth--right down upon me, as I lay underneath?

My blood seemed to stand still. A deadly paralysing coldness stole all
over me as I turned my head round on the pillow and determined to test
whether the bedtop was really moving or not, by keeping my eye on the
man in the picture.

The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black, frowzy
outline of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel
with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And steadily and
slowly--very slowly--I saw the figure, and the line of frame below the
figure, vanish, as the valance moved down before it.

I am, constitutionally, anything but timid. I have been on more than one
occasion in peril of my life, and have not lost my self-possession for
an instant; but when the conviction first settled on my mind that the
bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down
upon me, I looked up shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the
hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to
suffocate me where I lay.

I looked up, motionless, speechless, breathless. The candle, fully
spent, went out; but the moonlight still brightened the room. Down and
down, without pausing and without sounding, came the bedtop, and still
my panic terror seemed to bind me faster and faster to the mattress on
which I lay--down and down it sank, till the dusty odour from the lining
of the canopy came stealing into my nostrils.

At that final moment the instinct of self-preservation startled me out
of my trance, and I moved at last. There was just room for me to roll
myself sideways off the bed. As I dropped noiselessly to the floor, the
edge of the murderous canopy touched me on the shoulder.

Without stopping to draw my breath, without wiping the cold sweat
from my face, I rose instantly on my knees to watch the bedtop. I was
literally spellbound by it. If I had heard footsteps behind me, I
could not have turned round; if a means of escape had been miraculously
provided for me, I could not have moved to take advantage of it. The
whole life in me was, at that moment, concentrated in my eyes.