[The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer<br> Complete by Charles James Lever]@TWC D-Link book
The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer
Complete

CHAPTER XXV
2/14

Whether I am so far guilty or not, is not now the question; suffice it to say, that Harry Lorrequer, for reasons best known to himself, lives abroad, where he will be most happy to see any of his old and former friends who take his quarters en route; and in the words of a bellicose brother of the pen, but in a far different spirit, he would add, "that any person who feels himself here alluded to, may learn the author's address at his publishers." "Now let us go back to our muttons," as Barney Coyle used to say in the Dublin Library formerly -- for Barney was fond of French allusions, which occasionally too he gave in their own tongue, as once describing an interview with Lord Cloncurry, in which he broke off suddenly the conference, adding, "I told him I never could consent to such a proposition, and putting my chateau (chapeau) on my head, I left the house at once." It was nearly three o'clock in the morning, as accompanied by the waiter, who, like others of his tribe, had become a kind of somnambulist ex-officio, I wended my way up one flight of stairs, and down another, along a narrow corridor, down two steps, through an antechamber, and into another corridor, to No.

82, my habitation for the night.

Why I should have been so far conducted from the habitable portion of the house I had spent my evening in, I leave the learned in such matters to explain; as for me, I have ever remarked it, while asking for a chamber in a large roomy hotel, the singular pride with which you are ushered up grand stair-cases, down passages, through corridors, and up narrow back flights, till the blue sky is seen through the sky-light, to No.

199, "the only spare bed-room in the house," while the silence and desolation of the whole establishment would seem to imply far otherwise--the only evidence of occupation being a pair of dirty Wellingtons at the door of No.

2.
"Well, we have arrived at last," said I, drawing a deep sigh, as I threw myself upon a ricketty chair, and surveyed rapidly my meagre-looking apartment.
"Yes, this is Monsieur's chamber," said the waiter, with a very peculiar look, half servile, half droll.


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