Not a word had he heard, nor had he made any inquiry, about madhouses, public or private; yet it seemed to him that he was wiser than when he entered the chocolate house, and that he knew all he wanted to know. CHAPTER VII. THE SMILES OF NATURE AND THE CHARMS OF ART. Mr. Fétis slept until late in the afternoon, and awoke restored to his senses and so far recovered in his health as to be able to dress himself and go down-stairs. He was taking a cup of coffee strengthened with cognac in his wife's parlour when the Topsparkle orange and brown livery again enlivened the doorstep, and a note was handed in at the door. It was a somewhat urgent summons from Fétis's patron and master. "If you are well enough to come to me this afternoon, I should like to see you," wrote Mr. Topsparkle; "my messenger will get you a chair." Fétis told the footman that he was able to walk, and would wait upon Mr. Topsparkle almost immediately. He followed the footman in about five minutes, and was at once admitted to his master's dressing-room, where he found Mr. Topsparkle sitting before the fire, in slippers and a crimson brocade _négligé_. "My good Fétis, pray think me not inhuman in sending for you," he exclaimed, in his airiest manner, "but if you have vital power enough to put my head and complexion in order for the evening, it will be a real benevolence on your part. I am to go to an assembly at Henrietta's, and I don't want to look older than poor Mr. Congreve, who has the aspect of a sickly Methuselah." "I do not believe her Grace thinks so, sir," said Fétis, going over to the toilet-table and beginning to arrange his arsenal of little china pots and crystal bottles, brushes and sponges, and hare's-feet. "O, for her he is always Adonis. But he grows daily more wrinkled and mummified, and he paints as badly as Kneller at his worst, which is saying much," replied Topsparkle, seating himself in front of the glass, a Venetian mirror, framed in filagree silver, which ought to have reflected beauty as young and fresh as Belinda's. "And so, my poor friend," he continued with a sympathetic air, "you have been very ill. May I ask the nature of your malady?" "I was as near death as I could be, I believe, sir," answered Fétis gloomily, still occupied with cosmetics and paint-brushes, and going on with his work as he spoke. "You will laugh at me doubtless when I tell you the cause of my indisposition, for you have a lighter nature than mine, or you could scarce live contentedly in this house." "I have less education, and more philosophy, Fétis. That is the secret of my easier temper." "I saw a ghost last night, sir," said Fétis, beginning his operations on his master's complexion. "Indeed, my dear Fétis, I am told they swarm in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury, where I hear you spent last midnight in most patrician society." "How did you know where I spent my evening?" gasped Fétis.