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 thorough clumsy British
four-poster, with a 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
the picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of