Crowds of smiling gnomes, cheerfully hung with other people's property, stood in rank, gaily responding to the cries of rapture with which their respective victims singled them out; there were dramatic meetings between robbers and robbed, joyous recognition of property and gnome, ecstatic greetings on the part of despoiled tourists of Numéro Cinq, Numéro Cent, Numéro everything but Quatre. Agonized inquiries for Numéro Quatre of other brass-plated caps elicited cheerful replies that he would be here soon; but he was small and Ermengarde was not over tall; and as gnome after gnome was recaptured by long-lost owners, and compelled to unload his spoil upon the long counter, to be marked with mystic runes to a briefly muttered shibboleth in polyglot accents, and the congested crowd thinned and melted, and time and strength and the last remnants of hope in Ermengarde's breast with it, she felt herself on the point of tears, and was just beginning to drag herself empty-handed to the long-desired repose of that artistically decorated stateroom, when, at the far end of the hall, the square and cheerful countenance of the missing Numéro Quatre was at last discerned, and the whole of his sins and her sufferings forgotten in an eye-blink. As for the gnome, he unblushingly commanded his victim to quicken her trembling steps on pain of losing the train, went through a quick pantomime at the counter, and dashed off with his spoil at express speed, followed at a respectful distance by his exhausted prey, whose fainting spirits rose when at last she saw the long-hoped-for train, with its vases of mimosa, rose, and sweet double stock in the restaurant car windows. Very haughtily she handed her ticket to a magnificently gold-braided person at his demand, expecting to be respectfully conducted to her place "as to a theatre stall"; and sighed with deep content, feeling that the great all-compensating moment of the journey had at last arrived. But the great gold-braided one, muttering a number to the long-lost Quatre, merely waved a hand towards a sort of steep companion-ladder, and turned to resume a broken chat with a friend. The ladder surmounted, and the gnome having plumped the baggage, sadly reduced in quantity and possibly in quality, into the first compartment he came to and vanished with silver in hand, Ermengarde found herself in a narrow slip of a compartment with a wide and springy seat, a tiny, hinged slab under the outside window and just room and no more for the disposal of moderate-sized female limbs without positive discomfort or involuntary kicks against an oblique wooden partition, narrowing to the doorway, varnished, and featureless, a large spittoon filled with water, a fellow traveller with mountains of hand-baggage, and nothing more. The private dressing-room, the airy space, the little hinged seats, "should the passenger wish to change position," etc., where were these?