CHAPTER I.

ABOUT the middle of the last century, at eight o'clock in the evening, in
a large but poor apartment, a man was slumbering on a rough couch. His
rusty and worn suit of black was of a piece with his uncarpeted room, the
deal table of home manufacture, and its slim unsnuffed candle.

The man was Triplet, scene painter, actor and writer of sanguinary plays,
in which what ought to be, viz., truth, plot, situation and dialogue,
were not; and what ought not to be, were--_scilicet,_ small talk, big
talk, fops, ruffians, and ghosts.

His three mediocrities fell so short of one talent that he was sometimes
_impransus._

He slumbered, but uneasily; the dramatic author was uppermost, and his
"Demon of the Hayloft" hung upon the thread of popular favor.

On his uneasy slumber entered from the theater Mrs. Triplet.

She was a lady who in one respect fell behind her husband; she lacked his
variety in ill-doing, but she recovered herself by doing her one thing a
shade worse than he did any of his three. She was what is called in grim
sport an actress; she had just cast her mite of discredit on royalty by
playing the Queen, and had trundled home the moment the breath was out of
her royal body. She came in rotatory with fatigue, and fell, gristle,
into a chair; she wrenched from her brow a diadem and eyed it with
contempt, took from her pocket a sausage, and contemplated it with
respect and affection, placed it in a frying-pan on the fire, and entered
her bedroom, meaning to don a loose wrapper, and dethrone herself into