DAUBINET returns.  He has found the rooms.  The somnolent boots will carry our things upstairs.  Which of the two rooms will I have?  They are en suite.  I make no choice.  It is, I protest, a matter of perfect indifference to me; but one room being infinitely superior to the other, I select it, apologetically.  DAUBINET, being more of a Mark Tapley than I am, is quite satisfied with the arrangement, and has almost entirely recovered his wonted high spirits.

[Illustration]

“Very good. Tres bien! Da!  Petzikoff!  Pedadjoi!  I shall sleep like a top. Bon soir!  Buono notte!  Karascho! Blass the Prince of WAILES!” and he has disappeared into his bedroom.  I never knew a man so quick in unpacking, getting into bed, and going to sleep.  He hasn’t far to go, or else Morpheus must have caught him up, en route, and hypnotised him.  I hear him singing and humming for two minutes; I hear him calling out to me, “All right?  Are you all right?” and, once again invoking the spirit of Mark Tapley, I throw all the joviality I can into my reply as I say, through the wall, “Quite, thanks.  Jolly!  Good-night!” But my reply is wasted on him; he has turned a deaf ear to me, the other being on the pillow, and gives no sign.  If he is asleep, the suddenness of the collapse is almost alarming.  Once again I address him.  No answer.  I continue my unpacking.  All my portmanteau arrangements seem to have become unaccountably complicated.  I pause and look round.  Cheerless.  The room is bare and lofty, the bed is small, the window is large, and the one solitary bougie sheds a gloom around which makes unpacking a difficulty.  I pull up the blind.  A lovely moonlight night.  In front of me, as if it had had the politeness to put itself out of the way to walk up here, and pay me a visit, stands the Cathedral, that is—­some of it; but what I can see of it, au clair de la lune, fascinates me.  It is company, it is friendly.  But it is chilly all the same, and the sooner I close the window and retire the better.  Usual difficulty, of course, in closing French window.  After a violent struggle, it is done.  The bed looks chilly, and I feel sure that that stuffed, pillow-like thing, which is to do duty for blanket and coverlet, can’t be warm enough.

Hark! a gentle snore.  A very gentle one.  It is the first time I ever knew a snore exercise a soothing effect on the listener.  This is decidedly soporific.  It is an invitation to sleep.  I accept.  The Cathedral clock sounds a carillon.  It plays half a tune, too, as if this was all it had learnt up to the present, or perhaps to intimate that there is more where that comes from, only I must wait for to-morrow, and be contented with this instalment.  I am.  Half a tune is better than no tune at all, or vice versa:  it doesn’t matter.  When the tune breaks off I murmur to myself, “To be continued in our next;” and so—­as I believe, for I remember nothing after this—­I doze off to sleep on this my first night in the ancient town of Reims.