I mingled with the bustling crowds on the streets of Budapest for three days and then became a second-class passenger en route to Paris, there being no through third-class coach. This journey through the beautiful Austrian and Swiss Alps was uneventful. I was only entertained by a German, who had returned from America where he held a position as cook in a short-order restaurant in Butte, and a French couple who fed their two-year-old baby large quantities of beer. This infant had a capacity that would make many an American undergraduate envious.
Alighting from my train at midnight I walked through the crowded station and in a minute was making my way along a deserted street of Paris. I intended to locate an hotel as soon as possible. I had hardly gone a block when a heavy down-pour of rain set in and I foresaw that I was in for a thorough drenching unless I sought shelter at once. At that moment a man appeared out of the darkness and enquired if I wanted an hotel. It had been my custom to decline all street hotel hawkers but, in view of the heavy rain, I decided to accept the services of the man and to find out what kind of an establishment he had. He took my hand bag and started back towards the station with me close behind him. We turned to the right and walked along the railroad tracks while the rain continued to come down in torrents. Three blocks in this direction and my guide crossed the tracks and proceeded down a dark street. Suspicions began to arise within me as to where the Frenchman was leading me. My knowledge of French was so limited that I could not find out anything but that I was going to an hotel. I decided to continue. I had heard stories of how innocent travellers are sometimes trapped by the thugs of European cities, drugged and robbed. This thought came to my mind but did not weaken my determination to go ahead and get under cover as soon as possible. We continued along this dark thoroughfare. We seemed to be in the wholesale district and there was not a human being in sight. Finally we turned down a narrow alley, at the end of which was a decrepit stairway. Up this rickety flight we ascended and at the top turned into a room dimly lighted by the intermittent flicker of a candle, which was resting on a high desk. Behind this desk I could see a bearded Frenchman who peered over his spectacles as the two of us entered. My guide and the old fellow exchanged a few words and I was conducted down the hall to my room. This compartment contained a wash-stand and a heavy wooden bed. Inside, my suspicions began to increase as to the safety of my place of abode. There seemed to be an atmosphere of mystery and I thought that I might expect anything. I listened at the door for strange sounds but heard nothing but a creaking noise which seemed to come from the back end of the building. Before retiring I decided to take every precaution and made up my mind that if any Frenchman attempted to disturb my rest with the intention of relieving me of my money he was going to be welcomed with at least the best fight he ever encountered. I first locked the door with a pass key I had in my possession. Then I placed the back of the bed against the door and wedged the wash-stand in between it and the wall. The room was so small that the stand made a tight fit in the space left for it. Armed with a piece of pipe I found in one of the drawers of the wash-stand I threw myself on the bed, clothes and all, and shortly was as sound asleep as if guarded by a regiment.
My suspicions may have been nothing but a bubble to explode in the morning. However, I am sure that I was in the proper place to be stripped of my coin by any means necessary. I evidently was not worth plucking. I was awakened in the morning by the moving trains in the yards near-by and without any delay grabbed my bag and in a minute was out of the joint on my way to a more civilised part of the city. I learned from a French shop-keeper a few days later that in this very lodging house in which I feared foul play, two Englishmen had been gagged, robbed and dumped into an alley for the rest of the night.
My experience in this hotel netted me two things: scabies and influenza. The bed clothes were so filthy that I was infected by a germ which penetrates the skin and causes no end of trouble. It was fully three months later that I mastered this disease, known by the euphonious name of scabies, and only after prolonged treatment by a doctor. My exposure to the rain and cold gave me an attack of influenza which, with its accompanying fever, pains and aches, was poor equipment with which to see Paris.
In spite of this malady I kept moving and succeeded in finding a clean and comfortable room at one franc a day on the fifth floor of a small hotel. The main objection to this place was the absence of an elevator and it was a most fatiguing effort for a sick man to climb these five flights several times a day. Later I learned that I had not much improved upon my neighbourhood of the first night, for I was now located in Monte Mart.
To spend a few days in Paris without company except a case of influenza was anything but a cheerful outlook. I went to a drug store and told one of the clerks my symptoms. He put up a prescription which I took conscientiously, at the same time exerting my will power not to let the disease get sufficient hold on my constitution to force me to bed and make me a public charge of the municipal authorities. Each day I arose, hoping that my fever would subside, and dragged myself about the city. On the Rue de Turbigo in the vicinity of the Halles Centrales, I fainted away and fell to the sidewalk. When I recovered consciousness I was speeding at a rapid rate in an ambulance for the municipal hospital. A glass of water was being choked down my throat. This resuscitated me. Accompanied by one of the ambulance attendants I returned to my hotel.
The average visitor to Paris places himself in the hands of a guide connected with one of the large hotels and is thus relieved of all the routine and detail of systematically and profitably seeing the city. A guide is a luxury never meant for a poor man. I never entertained the thought of hiring such an individual. A map of the streets, a Baedeker and some intelligence was all I had. With this outfit I explored Paris. Sometimes I would go about sight-seeing methodically, and again I would simply drift. To drift is the more interesting. Down the Boulevard Magneta I found my way to the Halles Centralles, the central and largest market of Paris. I wandered through the interesting pavillons which cover twenty-two acres. I jostled along the narrow streets, covered with hay, decayed vegetables and other refuse, and mingled with the natives. I little realised what was in store for me. I crossed the Seine and visited the Hotel des Invalides, under the dome of which repose the ashes of Napoleon I. I moved on to the Pantheon where I attached myself to a group of American tourists conducted by a Cook's guide. This harmless gathering surely could not lead me into any trouble. I stood in their midst and listened to the mumbling speech of the guide as though I were a regular member of the party and had paid my fee. We were taken to the vaults in which are located the tombs of Victor Hugo, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Voltaire and others. An attendant of the Pantheon went in advance of our little procession and unlocked the heavy doors which led into the various tombs and the curious looking crowd would draw together while the guide grew eloquent on the life of some reclining corpse. When we surrounded the tomb of Voltaire I became so engrossed by the fact that I was in the presence of the remains of this master mind of the past that I failed to leave with the party and remained a minute, rather stupefied. When I returned to my senses I found that the porter had locked the door of the vault and I was incarcerated in the gruesome abode of a dead man. The Thomas Cook and Son party had returned to the main floor and I was the sole living creature in the crypt of the building. To add to my ghastly situation the lights were turned off, for it was nearly night-fall. My prospects for immediate freedom were rapidly diminishing. I decided to call out in the hope that I would attract the attention of one of the porters on the main floor. I gave a shriek which sent shivers down my spine and nearly frightened me to death. I at once saw that it was useless to shout as a means of being rescued, for the echoes of my call resounded in such confusion from the walls of the small vault that they sounded like a bedlam of bass drums turned loose. If I shrieked again I was afraid that I might awake Voltaire. I had heard ghost stories in which the main character, on a dare, voluntarily entered the tomb of a dead man; but I never thought that I should play this rôle against my will in the heart of Paris. There was nothing left for me to do but wait until some one came to liberate me. The prospect of this event's happening before morning was very remote. I therefore resigned myself to my confinement and concluded to spend the night communing with the spirit of Voltaire. I hope that the august gentleman enjoyed my company. I know that I didn't enjoy his. On previous occasions in my life I have, under trying circumstances, spent lengthy and wearisome nights, but as I recall them, they were mere flashes of time compared to the long, ghostly and dark hours I slept with Voltaire. It was about six o'clock in the evening and I estimated that it would be at least nine in the morning before another party of travellers would be conducted into the vaults of the Pantheon. I made up my mind to spend most of this time in sleep, if such a thing were possible. I stretched out on the cold pavement, alongside of my bed-mate, closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was in a warm couch and thus hypnotise myself into sleep. My mind refused to transform the hard slab under me into a comfortable mattress. The corpse of Voltaire was haunting my brain and the stillness of the tomb nearly drove me insane. The long hours wore away while I lay awake, my mind full of hideous thoughts and imaginations. About midnight I dozed off from pure mental exhaustion and spent the rest of the night the victim of the most gruesome and ghastly dreams any man ever had. I awoke at six o'clock, only to spend three more hours in this fearful prison cell. I was literally buried alive. Shortly after nine I heard the clump of feet and chatter of voices and I knew a group of tourists was approaching. My spirits were immediately transformed. In a minute the tourists stood before my tomb. The door was unlocked and I rushed out like a wild beast. The attendant stood speechless. The sightseers drew away in fright. A living man leaping from a tomb of the dead! I did not wait to give any explanation or receive congratulations on obtaining my freedom, but bounded down the crypt to the stairs, up to the main floor and out of the Pantheon into the fresh air. Those fifteen hours with Voltaire seemed like a century, and I sauntered down the street with the feeling that Rip van Winkle had nothing on me.