In a small side-room of the great building was a great oriel window, with a deep seat from which one looked out upon treetops, lawns and towers. Many of those who waited, to solace themselves took down some volume of an antick poet or tragedian, and reposed themselves on the window-seat or upon the luxurious cushioned benches. Some were seen to become immediately absorbed in the skillfully told fable before them, others to gaze abstractedly out of doors at the dark and mysterious evergreens. Still others occupied themselves in scrutinizing the many beautiful female passengers, who continually entered and went out by a little gate at the back of the chamber. All those who thus took their ease were, however, allowed but little time for their dalliance, until each one of them should be called by name, when whoever amongst them it was had been summoned would make haste to reach the low, counter-like structure in the furthest recesses of the apartment. Here was conveyed to each, by the attendant, what must have been in the nature of a sentence, for each was perceived either to startle and grow pale, or to turn away with a countenance of tragick despair, or to depart bearing bundles the possession of which seemed to render him no happier than before.

It was in a great hall adjacent to this place of judgment, however, that the gloomy and darkling splendour of the palace really displayed itself. Here massy pillars of stone supported the great arch of the roof, decorated in the Roman fashion which Vitruvius has taught us so well to admire. Below the glory of this reticulated ceiling, effulgent with the light of a thousand candles, lived and worked the other unfortunate inmates of the vast and awe-inspiring edifice. Unfortunate they were indeed to be called, for not one of them who appeared smiling and joyous but wore his smile as a mask to counterfeit his humour, and feign a satisfaction which in reality he had no hope of possessing. Indeed, each as he worked was occupied with such melancholick reflections as might have befitted Panterias the sage, when the future course of his life was revealed to him by the haruspex; as that all the labors of the scholar, the resolutions of the philosopher, even the ecstasies of the poet are meaningless and in vain, when they confront the dark and fathomless abyss beyond. Outside, through the high shining windows of the hall, could be seen the white, jagged clouds and the blue author in which they were so lightly afloat. The sweet wind hurried in through the open casement after it had touched the bare trees. . . howbeit not the thought of deliverance, of return to the outside so long forgotten could comfort the dwellers within the hall.

So great a hold had the insidious fluency of eighteenth-century prose, and its right-minded gloom upon the Vagabond that he too, for a while, could not be comforted by the thought of deliverance, or even by the subtle transformation in the air, as of vast changes brewing.

TODAY

10 O'Clock

"Victor Hugo," Professor Morise, Emerson 211.