Pickwick Abroad; or, The Tour in France — page 360: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PICKWICK ABROAD. 347 of one moon he saw two. Alarmed at these phenomena, Mr. Kal- laway thought it would be better to sleep at some hotel than attempt to return home at that late hour; for he had a faint recollection of having read in Galignani’s Messenger, a few days before, that a hackney-coachman had murdered a gentleman in the outskirts of Paris, or that a gentleman had murdered a hackney-coachman, he did not exactly know which; but he persuaded himself that it would be more prudent to sleep at Lawson’s, where he was known, than trust himself in a vehicle where he was a perfect stranger. So he arrived at the gate of Lawson’s hotel at about half-past one in the morning, fully: convinced in his own mind that there were two moons, two columns in the Place Venddéme, and two porters who opened the hotel-door for him. Be all this as it may—Mr. Kallaway demanded if he could have a bed; and as his request was accompanied by a five-franc piece, which he had a sufficiency of caution left about him to slip into the porter’s hand, an answer in the affirmative was returned. “There is exactly one,” said the porter; ‘‘and only one. And J am still afraid it will not suit you, for it is on the fifth floor, and looks upon the leads at the back of the building.”’ Mr. Kallaway just understood that he could have a bed; and that was all he required. So he bounced through the wicket, nearly knocked the porter down, and fell against the door of that function- ary’s lodge in his endeavours to hold himself up. “How very silppery the yard is,” observed Mr. Kallaway to the porter. The porter assented to the truth of this remark with the uncontra- dictory politeness of a Frenchman; and having lit a candle in his lodge, and taken a key from a nail in the wall, he desired his wife to take care of the baby and the gate, as if the latter article were a lovely Infant as dear to him as the former, and led the way towards the bed-room destined for Mr. Kallaway. They crossed the yard, and ascended the flight of stairs on the right hand side corer at the bottom ; and when they arrived at the fifth storey, the porter put the key into the lock of a door, handed Mr. Kallaway the candle, and retired to relieve his spouse of one of the two charges he had en- trusted to her. Mr. Kallaway unlocked the door, and walked into the bed-room as well as he could, wondering why the door-way was so small, and uttering certain imprecations against his eyes, and then the candle, and then the very limbs which aided him to enter his couch. He did not, however, think of including the window, which was wide open, in the catalogue of subjects chosen for his invectives; nor did he’ take the trouble to close it. Mr. Kallaway fell into bed and asleep at the same moment; and most varied and chequered were the dreams which broke upon his rest. At one moment he was employed in hunting a black-and-white sow out of his celery-beds; at another he was contemplating a litter of half-a-dozen pigs with the most unfeigned satisfaction; and then he fancied that he saw the two moons, and the two columns, and the two porters all over again. Whether he were only dozing after this Series of singular visions, or whether he were again dreaming, we Eomichbooks (E@) =