re'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 thorough 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 favored 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 mo