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- 10148
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- BOOK XVI.
FIRST NIGHT OF THEIR ARRIVAL IN THE CITY.
I.
The stage was belated.
The country road they traveled entered the city by a remarkably wide and
winding street, a great thoroughfare for its less opulent inhabitants.
There was no moon and few stars. It was that preluding hour of the night
when the shops are just closing, and the aspect of almost every
wayfarer, as he passes through the unequal light reflected from the
windows, speaks of one hurrying not abroad, but homeward. Though the
thoroughfare was winding, yet no sweep that it made greatly obstructed
its long and imposing vista; so that when the coach gained the top of
the long and very gradual slope running toward the obscure heart of the
town, and the twinkling perspective of two long and parallel rows of
lamps was revealed--lamps which seemed not so much intended to dispel
the general gloom, as to show some dim path leading through it, into
some gloom still deeper beyond--when the coach gained this critical
point, the whole vast triangular town, for a moment, seemed dimly and
despondently to capitulate to the eye.
And now, ere descending the gradually-sloping declivity, and just on its
summit as it were, the inmates of the coach, by numerous hard, painful
joltings, and ponderous, dragging trundlings, are suddenly made sensible
of some great change in the character of the road. The coach seems
rolling over cannon-balls of all calibers. Grasping Pierre's arm, Isabel
eagerly and forebodingly demands what is the cause of this most strange
and unpleasant transition.
"The pavements, Isabel; this is the town."
Isabel was silent.
But, the first time for many weeks, Delly voluntarily spoke:
"It feels not so soft as the green sward, Master Pierre."
"No, Miss Ulver," said Pierre, very bitterly, "the buried hearts of some
dead citizens have perhaps come to the surface."
"Sir?" said Delly.
"And are they so hard-hearted here?" asked Isabel.
"Ask yonder pavements, Isabel. Milk dropt from the milkman's can in
December, freezes not more quickly on those stones, than does snow-white
innocence, if in poverty, it chance to fall in these streets."
"Then God help my hard fate, Master Pierre," sobbed Delly. "Why didst
thou drag hither a poor outcast like me?"
"Forgive me, Miss Ulver," exclaimed Pierre, with sudden warmth, and yet
most marked respect; "forgive me; never yet have I entered the city by
night, but, somehow, it made me feel both bitter and sad. Come, be
cheerful, we shall soon be comfortably housed, and have our comfort all
to ourselves; the old clerk I spoke to you about, is now doubtless
ruefully eying his hat on the peg. Come, cheer up, Isabel;--'tis a long
ride, but here we are, at last. Come! 'Tis not very far now to our
welcome."
"I hear a strange shuffling and clattering," said Delly, with a shudder.
"It does not seem so light as just now," said Isabel.
"Yes," returned Pierre, "it is the shop-shutters being put on; it is the
locking, and bolting, and barring of windows and doors; the
town's-people are going to their rest."
"Please God they may find it!" sighed Delly.
"They lock and bar out, then, when they rest, do they, Pierre?" said
Isabel.
"Yes, and you were thinking that does not bode well for the welcome I
spoke of."
"Thou read'st all my soul; yes, I was thinking of that. But whither lead
these long, narrow, dismal side-glooms we pass every now and then? What
are they? They seem terribly still. I see scarce any body in
them;--there's another, now. See how haggardly look its criss-cross,
far-separate lamps.--What are these side-glooms, dear Pierre; whither
lead they?"
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