I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject.What was I to do? What was to become of me? Into what extremity was I submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future.I might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery.

A desperate idea came into my head.Under any other circumstances I should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it fast.Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me fromthe landlord's table and the company I might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,--and something in a liquid form,--and talk to me? I could, I would, I did.