about ten o'clock. We left our luggage at the railway station, and took
an omnibus for the Hotel de Provence, which we chose at a venture, among
a score of other hotels.

As this hotel was a little off the direct route of the omnibus, the
driver set us down at the corner of a street, and pointed to some lights,
which he said designated the Hotel do Provence; and thither we proceeded,
all seven of us, taking along a few carpet-bags and shawls, our equipage
for the night. The porter of the hotel met us near its doorway, and
ushered us through an arch, into the inner quadrangle, and then up some
old and worn steps,--very broad, and appearing to be the principal
staircase. At the first landing-place, an old woman and a waiter or two
received us; and we went up two or three more flights of the same broad
and worn stone staircases. What we could see of the house looked very
old, and had the musty odor with which I first became acquainted at
Chester.

After ascending to the proper level, we were conducted along a
corridor, paved with octagonal earthen tiles; on one side were
windows, looking into the courtyard, on the other doors opening into the
sleeping-chambers. The corridor was of immense length, and seemed still
to lengthen itself before us, as the glimmer of our conductor's candle
went farther and farther into the obscurity. Our own chamber was at a
vast distance along this passage; those of the rest of the party were on
the hither side; but all this immense suite of rooms appeared to
communicate by doors from one to another, like the chambers through which
the reader wanders at midnight, in Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. And they
were really splendid rooms, though of an old fashion, lofty, spacious,
with floors of oak or other wood, inlaid in squares and crosses,
and waxed till they were slippery, but without carpets. Our own