I gained a street-corner not very far, as it seemed to me, from my place of destination. Yet, until I glanced across the way, I was uncertain, and, but for the friendly refuge this opportunity presented, I think I must have faltered and perhaps fallen and frozen to death on the road-side.
To my bewildered and disordered brain, Aladdin's palace seemed suddenly to rise before me in that wilderness of sealed houses and uninhabited streets; for, as I have said before, the very dogs had crept away that night into secure corners, and not even a pariah chimney-sweep, with his dingy blanket drawn close around him, nodded and dozed by a watch-box or slept on a door-step.
I crept across the space that divided me from this cynosure of warmth and luxury, as a poor, draggled moth might do, to bask in the revivifying light of an astral lamp, attracted beyond my power to resist, to pause before the resplendent window, rich in green and purple and amber rotund vases, whose transparent contents were set forth and revealed by fiery jets of gas, toward which I feebly stretched my half-frozen fingers.
There was a splendid vision, also, of goldfish, in glass globes, jars of leaden rock-work, baskets of waxen fruits and flowers, crystal bottles containing rose and amber essences; but, above all, there was light—there was heat.
With one greedy, insatiate gaze my eyes swept in the details of this mimic Eden, and, in another moment, my hand turned the knob of the ground-glass door near the window, and I found myself in paradise!
Rest, shelter, heat—these must I have or perish, and, but for the timely refuge of this thrice-blessed apothecary's shop, I might have left this retrospect unwritten!
I staggered to a chair, and seated myself, unbidden, by the almost red-hot stove, and cowered above it for a time, oblivions of all else.
Then I looked timidly around me.
The master of this Eden was standing, at the moment when he first caught my eyes, holding up a bottle, scrutinizingly, between his face and the light, one of many of the same sort that a lad, in a long, white apron, was engaged in washing.
The odor of the various drugs and essences over which he presided formed an aromatic atmosphere singularly suggestive of incense, as did his costume, that of a high-priest of the temple; but, very soon discarding a gray-linen cape or talma, worn for the protection of his speckless coat, and tossing a bundle of corks rather disdainfully to his assistant, the head of the establishment came politely forward, standing on the other side of the stove, with clasped hands, expectantly.