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 étouffée! 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 themselves most innocent; for if I had gone
to sleep in my own arm-chair, pray who would have accused me of inebriety?

How I got home I know not. As I hurried through the streets, a legion of
voices, in every variety of intonation, yelled in my ears--"Turn him
out--he's drunk!" and when I woke in the middle of the night, tormented by