Among the bills I found nearly a dozen loose papers, all equally unimportant.

The fifth drawer was in sad confusion.

I took out first a loose bundle of ornamental cards, each containing the list of dishes at past banquets given or attended by the Major in London or Paris; next, a box full of delicately tinted quill pens (evidently a lady's gift); next, a quantity of old invitation cards; next, some dog's-eared French plays and books of the opera; next, a pocket-corkscrew, a bundle of cigarettes, and a bunch of rusty keys; lastly, a passport, a set of luggage labels, a broken silver snuff-box, two cigar-cases, and a torn map of Rome.

"Nothing anywhere to interest me," I thought, as I closed the fifth, and opened the sixth and last drawer.
The sixth drawer was at once a surprise and a disappointment.

It literally contained nothing but the fragments of a broken vase.
I was sitting, at the time, opposite to the cabinet, in a low chair.