"You have sworn on the cross that there is no one there."
A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED
BY WILKIE COLLINS
This is known as "The Traveler's Story," and is the first in a capital series of stories somewhat similar in character that were published in 1856 in a volume entitled "After Dark." The story first appeared in "Household Words," of which Charles Dickens (the author's friend and great admirer) was editor. The author has stated that he was indebted to Mr. W. S. Herrick for the facts on which the story is founded.
A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED
By WILKIE COLLINS
Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati's; but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew Frascati's, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for amusement's sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social anomaly as a respectable gambling-house.
"For Heaven's sake," said I to my friend, "let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming, with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati's, to a house where they don't mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise."
"Very well," said my friend, "we needn't go out of the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want. Here's the place just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report, as you could possibly wish to see."