Still, I knew not where I was; only in time I saw I had been removed
from the spot where I fell: I lay on no portico-step; night and
tempest were excluded by walls, windows, and ceiling. Into some house
I had been carried--but what house?
I could only think of the pensionnat in the Rue Fossette. Still half-
dreaming, I tried hard to discover in what room they had put me;
whether the great dormitory, or one of the little dormitories. I was
puzzled, because I could not make the glimpses of furniture I saw
accord with my knowledge of any of these apartments. The empty white
beds were wanting, and the long line of large windows. "Surely,"
thought I, "it is not to Madame Beck's own chamber they have carried
me!" And here my eye fell on an easy-chair covered with blue damask.
Other seats, cushioned to match, dawned on me by degrees; and at last
I took in the complete fact of a pleasant parlour, with a wood fire on
a clear-shining hearth, a carpet where arabesques of bright blue
relieved a ground of shaded fawn; pale walls over which a slight but
endless garland of azure forget-me-nots ran mazed and bewildered
amongst myriad gold leaves and tendrils. A gilded mirror filled up the
space between two windows, curtained amply with blue damask. In this
mirror I saw myself laid, not in bed, but on a sofa. I looked
spectral; my eyes larger and more hollow, my hair darker than was
natural, by contrast with my thin and ashen face. It was obvious, not
only from the furniture, but from the position of windows, doors, and
fireplace, that this was an unknown room in an unknown house.
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