ould make my dungeon free, or my
chains vanish into "thin air?" Still there had been a interposition,
and to that interposition, whether for future good or ill, it
certainly was due that I was not already mounting the scaffold, or
flung, headless trunk, into the miserable and nameless grave.

As I passed again through the cloisters, my ears were caught with the
sound of music and dancing. The contrast was sufficiently strong to
the scene from which I had just returned; yet this was the land of
contrasts. To my look of surprise, the turnkey who attended me
answered "Perhaps you have forgotten that this is Decadi, and on this
night we always have our masquerade. If you have not got a dress, I
shall supply you; my wife is a _fripier_ in the Antoine; she supplies
all the civic fetes with costumes, and you may have any dress you
like, from a grand signor with his turban, down to a _colporteur_ with
his pack, or a watchman with his nightcap."

My mind was still too unsettled to enjoy masquerading, notwithstanding
the temptation of the turnkey's wardrobe; and I felt all that absence
of accommodation to circumstances, that want of plasticity, that
failure of grasping at every hair's-breadth of enjoyment, which is
declared by foreigners to form the prodigious deficiency of John Bull.
If I could have taken refuge, for that night at least, in the saddest
cell of the old convent, or in the deepest dungeon of the new prison,
I should have gone to either with indulgence. I longed to lay down my
aching brains upon my pillow, and forget the fever of the time. But
prisoners have no choice; and the turnkey, after repeating his
recommendations that I should not commit an act of such profound
offence as to appear in the assembly without a domino, if I should
take nothing else from the store of the most popular _marchande_ in
Paris, the wife of his bosom, at last, with a shake of his head and a
bending of his heavy brows at my want of taste, unlocked the gate, and
thrust me into the midst of my old quarters, the chapel.

There a new scene indeed awaited me. The place which I had left filled
with trembling clusters of people, whole families clinging to each
other in terror, loud or mute, but all in the deepest dread of their
next summons, I found in a state of the most extravagant
festivity--the chapel lighted up from floor to root--bouquets planted
wherever it was possible to fix an artificial flower--gaudy wreaths
depending from the gal