says the parrot, awakened by a leap of the fire; for, the back-log has broken in half, and Pisgah sees, by the increased light, the very hair-powder gleam on the portrait of General Washington. But now the cloth is removed, and the old-fashioned table folds up its leaves; they sip some remarkable sherry, which grandfather regards with a wheezy sort of laugh, and after they have played one game of draughts, Mr. Pisgah looks at his gold chronometer, and asks if he has still the great room above the porch and plenty of bedclothes.

This is what Mr. Pisgah sees upon the film of his tears—wealth, happiness, manliness! When he dashes the tears themselves to the pavement with an oath, what rises upon his eye and his heart? Paris—grand, luxurious, pitiless, and he, at twilight, flung upon the[Pg 62] world, with neither kindred nor country—a thing unwilling to live, unfit to die!

[Pg 62]

He strolled along the quay to the Morgue; the beautiful water of St. Michel fell sibilantly cold from the fountain, and Apollyon above, at the feet of the avenging angel, seemed a sermon and an allegory of his own prostration. How all the folks upon the bridge were stony faced! It had never before occurred to him that men were cold-blooded creatures. He wondered if the Seine, dashing against the quays and piers beneath, were not their proper element? Ay! for here were three drowned people on the icy slabs of the Morgue, with half a hundred gazing wistfully at them, and their fixed eyes glaring fishily at the skylight, as if it were the surface of the river and they were at rest below.

So seemed all the landscape as he kept down the quay—the lines of high houses were ridges only in the sea, and Notre Dame, lifting its towers and sculptured façade before, was merely a high-decked ship, with sailors crowding astern. The holy apostles above the portal were more like human men than ever, with their silicious eyes and pulseless bosoms; while the hideous gargoyles at the base of each crocheted pinnacle, seemed swimming in the dusky evening.

It may have been that this aqueous phenomenon was natural to one "half-seas over;" but not till he stood on the place of the Hôtel de la Ville, did Pisgah have any consciousness whatever that he walked upon the solid world.

At this moment he was reminded, also, that he held a letter in his hand, his landlady's gift at parting; it[Pg 63] was dated, "Clichy dungeon," and signed by Mr. Freckle.

[Pg 63]

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