After having mounted numberless stories and wandered through long corridors, tumbled over invisible steps and intruded upon veritable assemblies of witches among the servants’ bedrooms, Roumestan, quite blown from that arduous ascent, to which his legs of an illustrious man were no longer equal, tumbled against a great big washbowl fastened to the wall.
“Who’s there?” spoke out a well-known voice coming from far down the throat.
The door opened slowly, weighed down by a clothes-rack upon which hung the entire wardrobe of the lodger for winter and summer; the room was small and Bompard did not lose the benefit of an eighth of an inch and was compelled to keep his toilet table in the corridor. His friend found him lying on a little iron bed, his brow decorated with a scarlet head-dress, a sort of Dantesque cap which rose up in astonishment at sight of the distinguished visitor.
“It can’t be you!”
“Are you ill?” said Roumestan.
“Ill? not much!”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“You see I am taking stock of things,” and then he added, to explain his thought: “I have so many plans in my head, so many inventions! Now and then I get dispersed and lose myself; it is only when I lie abed that I can gather myself together a little.”
Roumestan looked about for a chair, but none was there except the single one in use as a night table; it was covered with books and newspapers and had a candlestick wobbling on top of them all. He sat down on the foot of the bed.
“Why do we never see anything more of you?”