Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more."

"_Ach, mein Lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from
the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell
here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and
thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night,
what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in
their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic
has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here
and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and
lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to
moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous,
unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous
coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a
Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are
there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the
other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is
the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed
saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into
buckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure
cellars, _Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard
hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their
high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his
mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides
down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently,
sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen
first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and
dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but,
in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and
bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within,