my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me; and if any
man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me
in my unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous
a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting to a
wise man's happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as much as he
wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I speak of giving
laudanum away, I remember about this time a little incident, which I
mention because, trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again
in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined.
One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to
transact amongst English mountains I cannot conjecture; but possibly he
was on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant.

The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl, born and bred
amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort;
his turban therefore confounded her not a little; and as it turned out
that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers
in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all
communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In
this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master
(and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of
the earth besides perhaps a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to
understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly
imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not
immediately go down, but when I did, the group which presented itself,
arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of
my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes
exhibited in the ballets at the Opera-house, though so ostentatiously
complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall
with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more