I cannot deceive myself—I was horribly tipsy last night. Let him who has never been in the like case throw the first empty bottle at me!
How did it happen? In this way. I, a civilian, reading law, was invited to dine at the garrison mess. I had never been at a similar entertainment, and I cannot but think, now that I look back on it, that the officers played some trick on me. I only knew that they were prodigiously polite, which always looks suspicious. From a certain point, from the third course, I remember very little; a sort of cloudy curtain intercepts the view like the curtains that come down in a pantomime, and I don't know whether I was Clown, or Pantaloon, or Columbine.
Yet something must have happened to me, a great many things. I've been sleeping in my white tie; and then my face! What a shockingly yellow, dissipated face! Upon my word, it is a pretty affair! At my time, one-and-twenty, to be overcome by wine like a schoolboy out for a holiday!
I cannot express what I think of it.
How am I to know what happened last night? Ask my landlady? No; I cannot let her see how ashamed I am. Besides, she would only know the condition in which I came home; and that I can guess.
They say that from a single bone Professor Owen can reconstruct an entire antediluvian animal; I must try and do something similar to reconstruct my existence during the last twelve or fourteen hours. I must get hold of two or three clues.
Where can I find them?
In my pockets, perhaps.
Since I was a small boy I have always had the habit of stuffing them with all manner of things. Now, this is the time for me to search them.
I tremble. What shall I find?
[Searches his waistcoat pocket.