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 thoroughly 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 without
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,