(To be Continued.)
The Blue Chamber.
BY PROSPER MERIMEE.
A young man was walking up and down the waiting room of a railway station, in an agitated condition. He wore blue spectacles, and, although he had not a cold, he used his pocket-handkerchief incessantly. He held a little black bag in his left hand which, as I learned later, contained a silk dressing-gown and a pair of Turkish pantaloons.
Every now and again he went to the door and looked into the street, then he drew out his watch and consulted the station clock. The train did not leave for an hour; but there are people who always imagine they will be late. This train was not for people in a pressing hurry; there were very few first-class carriages in it. It was not an hour at which stock-brokers left, after business was finished, to go to their country homes for dinner. When travellers began to appear, a Parisian would have recognized from their bearing that they were either farmers, or small suburban tradesmen. Nevertheless, every time anyone came into the station, or a carriage drew up at the door, the heart of the young man with the blue spectacles became inflated like a balloon, his knees trembled, his bag almost fell from his hands, and his glasses off his nose, where, we may mention in passing, they were seated crookedly.