Chapter 18

MISERY ACQUAINTS MR. SCHNACKENBERGER WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS.

When Mr. Schnackenberger returned home from his persecutions, he found the door of the Double-barrelled Gun standing wide open: and, as he had observed a light in his own room, he walked right up-stairs without disturbing the sleeping waiter. But to his great astonishment, two gigantic fellows were posted outside the door; who, upon his affirming that he must be allowed to enter his own room, seemed in some foreign and unintelligible language to support the negative of that proposition. Without further scruple or regard to their menacing gestures, he pressed forwards to the chamber door; but immediately after felt himself laid hold of by the two fellows--one at his legs, the other at his head--and, spite of his most indignant protests, carried down-stairs into the yard. There he was tumbled into a little _dépôt_ for certain four-footed animals--with whose golden representative he had so recently formed an acquaintance no less intimate;--and, the height of the building not allowing of his standing upright, he was disposed to look back with sorrow to the paradise lost of his station upon the back of the quiet animal whom he had ridden on the preceding day. Even the dungeon appeared an elysium in comparison with his present lodgings, where he felt the truth of the proverb brought home to him--that it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Unfortunately, the door being fastened on the outside, there remained nothing else for him to do than to draw people to the spot by a vehement howling. But the swine being disturbed by this unusual outcry, and a general uproar taking place among the inhabitants of the stye, Mr. Schnackenberger's single voice, suffocated by rage, was over-powered by the swinish accompaniment. Some little attention was, however, drawn to the noise amongst those who slept near to the yard: but on the waiter's assuring them that it was 'only a great pig who would soon be quiet,' that the key could not be found, and no locksmith was in the way at that time of night, the remonstrants were obliged to betake themselves to the same remedy of patience, which by this time seemed to Mr. Jeremiah also the sole remedy left to himself.