"
So I picked out a couple of Sevres candlesticks; a painted Chinese screen,
all pagodas and parrots; two portraits of patched and powdered beauties in
the Watteau style; and a queer old clock surmounted by a gilt Cupid in a
chariot drawn by doves. If these failed to make him happy, thought I, he
must indeed be hard to please.
That afternoon, the things having been well dusted, and the rooms
thoroughly cleaned, we set to work to arrange the furniture, and so quickly
was this done that before we sat down to supper the place was ready for
occupation, even to the logs upon the hearth and the oil-lamp upon the
table.
All night my dreams were of the prisoner. I was seeking him in the gloom of
the upper rooms, or amid the dusky mazes of the leafless
plantations--always seeing him afar off, never overtaking him, and trying
in vain to catch a glimpse of his features. But his face was always turned
from me.
My first words on waking, were to ask if he had yet come. All day long I
was waiting, and watching, and listening for him, starting up at every
sound, and continually running to the window. Would he be young and
handsome? Or would he be old, and white-haired, and world-forgotten, like
some of those Bastille prisoners I had heard my father speak of? Would his
chains rattle when he walked about? I asked myself these questions, and
answered them as my childish imagination prompted, a hundred times a day;
and still he came not.
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