metimes I became almost
stupid by long reflection, and would sit to a late hour of the night,
unconscious of everything; and sometimes I would actually laugh outright
at the absurdity of my assumed calling, wondering how I ever could have
been fool enough to embrace it.

The world had evidently grown out of its superstitions; republicanism
and socialism, and all the other free and easy notions by which men
persuaded themselves that the rich are thieves, and the poor the just
inheritors of the gains, had knocked down many a mock idol besides
monarchy. Men no longer threw a pinch of salt over their left shoulder
when they upset the salt-cellar; did n't pierce their egg-shell, lest
the fairies might make a boat of it; and so, among many other remains
of the custom of our ancestors abandoned, they sat clown to dinner,
careless whether the party were thirteen or thirty.

"I might as well try and revive astrology," thought I, "as seek to trade
upon superstition in this unbelieving age! I doubt if all Paris contains
another quatorzieme than myself; the old villain knew the trade was
ruined, when he sold me his 'goodwill' of the business."

I was in the very deepest and darkest abyss of these gloomy thoughts one
evening, when a heavy down-pour of rain, and the sorrowful moan
of a December wind, added melancholy to my wearied spirit. It was such
a night that none would have ventured out who could have claimed the
humblest roof to shelter him. The streets were perfectly deserted, and,
early as it was, the shops were already closed for the night. The very
lamps that swung to and fro with the wind, looked hazy and dim amid
the sweeping rain, and the chains clanked with the dreary cadence of a
gibbet.

I knew it was needless to go through the ceremony of dressing on such a
night. "Better face all the imaginary terrors of a thirteen party than
brave the real danger of a storm like this,"--so I reasoned; and, in all
the freedom of my tattered dressing-gown, I paced my room in a frame of
mind very little above despair. "And this in Paris," cried I; "this the
city where in some hundred gilded saloons,--at this very moment--are met
men brilliant in all the gifts of genius, and women more beautiful and
more fascinating than the houris of Paradise. Wit and polished raillery,
bright glances and soft smiles, are now mingling amid the glitter of
stars, and crosses, and diamonds; while some thousands, like me, are
actually famishing with h