because it was distinct; on the contrary, at night, in the vague light
shed by a cork night-taper afloat in the water and oil of a bowl that
was attached to the wall by a brass ring, there could be seen through
a certain dim nebulosity, the furniture, the pictures and the other
paraphernalia that occupied the reception hall.

Facing the entrance stood a broad, solid table on which reposed an
old-fashioned music-box consisting of several cylinders that bristled
with pins; close beside it, a plaster statue: a begrimed figure
lacking a nose, and difficult to distinguish as some god, half-god or
mortal.

On the wall of the reception room and of the corridor hung some large,
indistinct oil paintings. A person of intelligence would perhaps have
considered them detestable, but the landlady, who imagined that a very
obscure painting must be very good, refreshed herself betimes with the
thought that mayhap these pictures, sold to an Englishman, would, one
day make her independent.

There were several canvases in which the artist had depicted
horrifying biblical scenes: massacres, devastation, revolting plagues;
but all this in such a manner, that, despite the painter's lavish
distribution of blood, wounds and severed heads, these canvases
instead of horrifying, produced an impression of merriment. One of
them represented the daughter of Herodias contemplating the head of
St. John the Baptist. Every figure expressed amiable joviality: the
monarch, with the indumentary of a card-pack king and in the posture
of a card-player, was smiling; his daughter, a florid-face dame, was
smiling; the familiars, encased in their huge helmets, were smiling,
and the very head of St. John the Baptist was smiling from its place