"Shall we leave the lights all burning in the parlor?" asked the housemaid.
"Certainly," replied Bates; "it wouldn't do for the missus to stumble over that thing in the dark."
"Lord!" said the housemaid, with a parting glance across her shoulder. "Lord! but it is a beast."
"An out and out monstrosity," the butler agreed.
Time passed; the servants went their ways; the parlor gas purred soothingly; the bric-à-brac engaged in whispered consultation. Whatever happened, the monstrosity should be made to feel its isolation—and it did. It stood a thing apart from its environment; it seemed to sigh, and presently its plebeian breast began to heave as with emotion. A crack developed in its tufted side, a pair of eyes appeared within the crack. The gas purred on; sounds from the servants' hall below suggested that the sherry had begun to express itself in terms of merriment. The crack grew wider until the sofa opened like a fat and flowery trunk. The eyes became a head, the head a man, who sat upon the sofa's edge and looked about him.
"All zings is the same," he murmured to himself in broken English. "Nothing is changed except that ze arrangements are in less taste zan in my time. Ah, people do not know when zay have ze good fortune."
He sighed, and, rising, ventured one large foot, encased in a felt shoe, upon the rug. He stood and gazed about him lovingly, as one who contemplates inanimate things once dear. He moved with noiseless caution to the nearest door and disappeared. Presently he returned, bearing a salver laden with pieces of silver from the dining-room—an ice-pitcher, an epergne, some dishes; these he proceeded deftly to roll in flannel bags, depositing each with loving care in the interior of the Monstrosity. Another expedition resulted in an equally attractive lot of plate, to be bestowed as carefully. Next, stepping to the mantel-piece, he selected a modest pair of Dresden images from the assortment there displayed.
"These," he soliloquized, "are mine undoubtedly. I might have broken them a thousand times and did not, and, therefore, they are mine."
He laid the figures tenderly and almost with a sigh beside the silver and closed the heavy tufted lid upon them.
"I will go upstairs for ze last time," he mused, a trace of sadness on his Gallic features, "and behold if Madame is still as careless with her jewel-box as in old days. I will ascertain for myself if Monsieur still sticks his scarf-pins in ze pin-cushion.... Ah, but it is depressing to revisit once familiar scenes. It makes one shed ze tear."