Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/36

 the bottom, it tumbled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was, that all was lost; and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection, I determined to abide the issue. The groom-was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine: but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems, taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears of insulted authority, | could not myself forbear joining in it: subdued to this, not so'much by the unhappy étourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter of course, that Dr. would sally out of his room: for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had