round, to my infinite dismay, I perceived Mr. Keeley,
having pushed the bystanders on one side, in the act of performing a kind
of Punchean dance upon the floor, accompanying himself with the vigorous
chuckling and crowing peculiar to the hero whose habiliments he wore. I
was horror-stricken--conceiving that grief had suddenly turned his brain.

All at once, he made a spring towards me, and, seizing my arm, thrust me
into a corner of the room, where he held me fast, exclaiming--

"Wretch! villain! restore me my wife--that talented woman your infernal
arts have destroyed! You did for her!"

"Mr. Keeley," said I, struggling to release myself from his grasp--"my
dear sir, pray compose yourself."

"Unhappy traitor!" he shouted, giving me an unmerciful tweak by the nose;
"Look at her silver skin laced with her golden blood!--see, see! Oh, see!"

This was rather too much, even from a man whose wits were astray. I began
to lose patience, and was preparing to rid myself somewhat roughly of the
madman's grasp, when a new phenomenon occurred.

The patient on the sofa, whom I had judged well nigh moribund, and
consequently incapable of any effort whatever, all at once sat up with a
sudden jerk, and gave vent to a series of the most ear-piercing shrieks
that ever assailed human tympanum.

_"Oh! oh! Mon Dieu! je suis etouffee! levez-vous donc,
monsieur--n'avez-vous pas honte!"_

I started up--O misery!--I had fallen asleep, and my head, resting against
a pillar, had slipped down, depositing itself upon the expansive bosom of
a portly French dame in the next box, who seemed, by her vehement
exclamations, to be quite shaken from the balance of her propriety by the
unlooked-for burthen I had imposed upon her; whilst a _petit monsieur_
poured forth a string of _sacres_ and _sapristies_ upon my devoted head
with a volubility of utterance truly astonishing.

I gazed about me with troubled and lack-lustre eye. Every lorgnette in the
boxes was levelled at my miserable countenance; a sea of upturned and
derisive faces grinned at me from the pit, and the gods in Olympus
thundered from on high--"Turn him out; he's drunk!"

This was the unkindest cut of all--thus publicly to be accused of
intoxication, a vice of all others I have ever detested and eschewed.

I cast one indignant glance around me, and left the theatre, lamenting the
depravity of our nature, which is, alas! always ready to put the worst
construction upon actions in the