"The more simple charms, you mean, not the more modest," replied his companion; "I never heard that Jeannette was famous for her modesty!" The opium draught which I had taken, counteracted in its effects by the pain of my body, and the irritation of my mind, began to make me somewhat delirious. Strange shapes seemed flitting about my bed--I saw faces looking at me out of the darkness, and insulting me with fiendish grins. At the same time, the light way in which the weak young man in the next chamber spoke of Helen--of my sweet, my beautiful Helen--worked me up to a pitch of frantic rage, which, mingling with the delirium of opium, made me resolve to get up and avenge her upon the spot. I accordingly raised myself in bed, and after sitting upright for a moment or two, with my brain seeming to whirl like the eddy of a stream, I got out with infinite difficulty, when the cold air, and the chill of the stones to my feet, in some degree recalled me to my senses, and instead of groping for my sword, as I intended, I returned towards my bed; but coming upon it sooner than I had expected, I struck it with my knee, fell over upon it, and, with the sort of despairing heedlessness of fever and wretchedness, lay still where I had fallen, till the opium overpowering me, I lost all recollection of my misery in a deep and deathlike slumber. It was late ere I woke, and when I did so, it was with one of those dreadful headachs, which seem to benumb every faculty of the mind and body; while at the same time, the bruises all over my left side were even more sensitively painful than the night before. The first thing I heard was a woman's voice, inquiring how I found myself; and looking round, I perceived a good-looking, fattish nun, of one of the charitable sisterhoods, sitting in a chair by my bedside. She seemed one of those good dames who attach themselves to great families, and act as an inferior sort of almoner, performing the part of charitable go-betweens; attending the sick servants with somewhat more skill than an apothecary, and more attention than a physician; serving as head nurse to the lady of the mansion, and acquiring much consequence with the poor, by dispensing the bounty of the rich. In answer to her question, I replied that I was in very great pain, both from a violent headach, and the bruises I had received; whereupon she immediately produced the phial, from which the surgeon had the night before administered his sleeping draught, intimating that I must take another portion to relieve me from what I suffered; and informing me, at the same time, in a very oracular tone, that it was not at all wonderful that my bones ached, after sleeping all night naked on the outside of the bed.