Alone--in Paris--unknown to a soul--with a vacant hour lying open before me--it was impossible any longer to avoid that unkind friend, thought. For a moment or two, I walked up and down the little chamber, whose antique furniture--the precise allotted portion which a traveller could not do without--called to my mind the old but splendid garnishing of my apartments at the Château de l'Orme. Where--I asked myself--where were all the familiar objects that habit had rendered dear to my eye?--where all the little trifles, round which memory lingers, even after time has torn her away from things of greater import?--where were the grand mountains whose vast masses would even now have been stretching dark and sublime across the twilight sky before my windows?--where the free breeze that wafted health with every blast?--where were the eyes whose glance was sunshine, and the voices whose tones were music, and the hearts whose happiness had centred in me alone? What had I instead? A petty chamber, in a petty inn--the rank close atmosphere of a swarming city, and the eternal clang of scolding, lying, blaspheming tongues, rising up with a din that would have deafened a Cyclop--while misery, and vice, and want, and sorrow, cabal, and treason, and treachery, and crime, were working around me, in the thousand narrow, jammed-up cells of that great infernal hive. Such was the picture that imagination contrasted with the sweet calm scene which memory portrayed; and casting myself down on the bed, I hid my face on the clothes, giving way to a burst of passionate sorrow, that relieved me with unmanly but still with soothing tears. While I yet lay there, I heard some one move in the chamber; and starting suddenly up, I saw a man carefully examining my baggage, with a very suspicious and nonchalant air. "Who the devil are you?" cried I, laying my hand on my sword. "_Garçon de l'auberge, ne vous deplaise, Monsieur_," replied the man. "Then Monsieur Garçon de l'auberge," said I, "beware how you touch my baggage; for though there be nothing in it but my clothes and a packet for his eminence the cardinal, I shall take care to slit your nose if you finger it without orders." The man started back at the name of the cardinal as if he had touched a viper, gave me the _monseigneur_ immediately, and replied, that he came to tell me supper was served, and the guests about to place themselves at table. Following him down, I found the _salle-à-manger_ tenanted by about ten persons, while upon the table smoked a savoury and plentiful supper, on which they but waited the presence of the host to fall with somewhat wolfish appetites. Silence reigned omnipotent at the first course; but at the second, two or three of the guests, more loquacious than the rest, began to entertain themselves and their neighbours with their own importance.