essential part of my dress.

I had now leisure to reflect. I seated myself on the ground and reviewed
the scenes through which I had just passed. I began to think that my
industry had been misemployed. Suppose I had met the person on his first
entrance into his chamber? Was the truth so utterly wild as not to have
found credit? Since the door was locked, and there was no other avenue,
what other statement but the true one would account for my being found
there? This deportment had been worthy of an honest purpose. My betrayer
probably expected that this would be the issue of his jest. My rustic
simplicity, he might think, would suggest no more ambiguous or elaborate
expedient. He might likewise have predetermined to interfere if my
safety had been really endangered.

On the morrow the two doors of the chamber and the window below would be
found unclosed. They will suspect a design to pillage, but their
searches will terminate in nothing but in the discovery of a pair of
clumsy and dusty shoes in the closet. Now that I was safe I could not
help smiling at the picture which my fancy drew of their anxiety and
wonder. These thoughts, however, gave place to more momentous
considerations.

I could not imagine to myself a more perfect example of indigence than I
now exhibited. There was no being in the city on whose kindness I had
any claim. Money I had none, and what I then wore comprised my whole
stock of movables. I had just lost my shoes, and this loss rendered my
stockings of no use. My dignity remonstrated against a barefoot
pilgrimage, but to this, necessity now reconciled me. I threw my
stockings between the bars of a stable-window, belonging, as I thought,
to the mansion I had just left. These, together with my shoes, I left to