I was lying prostrate, still awake—and (there being no shutters to the window at the foot of the bed) I was looking at some oddly-shaped, tall, acute-angled, slated roofs, glistening in the light of the round full moon, which was hanging immediately above them. The scene was delightfully silent and serene. Occasionally I faintly heard a distant footstep approaching, until treading heavily under the window, its sound gradually diminished, till all again was silent. Sometimes a cloud passing slowly across the moon would veil the roofs in darkness; and then, again, they would suddenly burst upon the eye, in silvery light, shining brighter than ever. As somewhat fatigued I lay half enjoying this scene, and half dozing, I suddenly heard, apparently close to me, the scream of a woman, which really quite electrified me!
On listening it was repeated, when, jumping out of bed and opening the door, I heard it again proceeding from a room at the distant end of the passage; and such was the violence of its tone, that my impression was—“the lady’s room is on fire!”
There is something in the piercing shriek of a woman in distress which produces an irresistible effect on the featherless biped, called man; and, in rushing to her assistance, he performs no duty—he exercises no virtue—but merely obeys an instinctive impulse which has been benevolently imparted to him—not for his own good, but for the safety and protection of a weaker and a better sex.
But although this feeling exists so powerfully chez nous, yet it has not by nature been imparted to common-place garments, such as coats, black figured silk waistcoats, rusty knee-breeches, nor even to easy shoes, blue worsted stockings, or such like; and, therefore, while, by an irresistible attraction which I could not possibly counteract, obeying the mysterious impulse of my nature, I rushed along the passage, these base, unchivalric garments remained coldly dangling over the back of a chair: in short, I followed the laws of my nature—they, theirs.
With some difficulty, having succeeded in bursting open the door just as a fifth shriek was repeated, I rushed in, and there, sitting up in her bed—her soft arms most anxiously extended towards me—her countenance expressing an agony of fear—sat a young lady, by no means ill-favoured, and aged (as near as I could hastily calculate) about twenty-one!
Almost in hysterics, she began, in German, to tell a long incoherent story; and though, with calm, natural dignity, I did what I could to quiet her, the tears rushed into her eyes—she then almost in convulsions began, with her hands under the bed-clothes, to scratch her knees, then shrieked again; and I do confess that I was altogether at a loss to conceive what in the sacred name of virtue was the matter with the young lady, when, by her repeating several times the word “Ratten! Ratten!!” I at once comprehended that there were (or that the amiable young person fancied that there were)—rats in her bed!
The dog Billy, as well as many puppies of less name, would instantly, perhaps, have commenced a vigorous attack; rats, however, are reptiles I am not in the habit either of hunting or destroying.
The young lady’s aunt, an elderly personage, now appeared at the door, in her night-clothes, as yellow and as sallow as if she had just risen from the grave; peeping over her shoulder, stood our landlady’s blooming daughter in her bed-gown—Leonhard, the son cum multis aliis. What they could all have thought of the scene—what they could have thought of my strange, gaunt, unadorned appearance—what they could have thought of the niece’s screams—and what they would have thought had I deigned to tell them I had come to her bedside merely to catch rats—it was out of my power to divine: however, the fact was, I cared not a straw what they thought; but, seeing that my presence was not requisite, I gravely left the poor innocent sufferer to tell her own story. “Ratten! Ratten!!” was its theme; and, long before her fears subsided, my mind, as well as its body, were placidly intranced in sleep.