Page 121 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Elective English—III

Notes feathery litter of wood-ashes, and got into bed, with the handkerchief full of money under my
pillow. I soon felt not only that I could not go to sleep, but also that I could not even close my
eyes. I was wide-awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve in my body trembled—every one of
my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. I tossed and rolled, and tried every kind of
position, and perseveringly sought out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no purpose. Now
I thrust my arms over the clothes; now I poked them under the clothes; now I violently shot my
legs straight out down to the bottom of the bed; now I convulsively coiled them up as near my
chin as they would go; now I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to the cool side, patted
it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust
it against the board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain; I groaned
with vexation as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night.
What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some method of diverting my
mind, I felt certain that 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 the 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 witho 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 a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with
a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading his eyes with
his hand, and looking intently upward—it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going
to be hanged. At any rate, he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward too—at the top of the bed. It was
a gloomy and not an interesting object, and I looked back at the picture. I counted the feathers in
the man’s hat—they stood out in relief—three white, two green. I observed the crown of his hat,
which was of conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been favoured by Guido
Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up. It could not be at the stars; such a desperado was
neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be
hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat and
plume of feathers? I counted the feathers again—three white, two green.

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