The noise I had heard, proceeded from half-a-dozen children, more than half naked, and extremely dirty, who were playing and shouting.
The room was large, and they had it all to themselves, for there was no furniture in it.
Striding over one, and pushing aside another, I opened a glass-door, and found myself in a bedroom.
I will not attempt to depict this apartment, but will leave it to the imagination of my readers, who, after the description given of the preceding room, may easily imagine it was far from clean or comfortable.
No one was there to receive me. I ventured, however, to utter once more the name of the magician I had come to see.
Two curtains, which had once been white, were suddenly drawn aside, and in the centre appeared a gaunt-looking head, covered with a cotton nightcap, yellow from age and long usage.
"What do you want, young man?" asked this odd-looking individual, addressing me.
"To see M. Hausheer," I replied.
"I am M. Hausheer"—and my interlocutor eyed me in a way which seemed to say—"And what next?"
My illusions, so poetical a quarter of an hour before, were, you may well believe, entirely dissipated. M. Hausheer only inspired me with feelings of disgust.