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But this reason for his surname is a vain fancy and an idle story; for whilst he was an infant a flash of lightning burnt his cradle, but did his body no harm, and only left a little mark on his forehead, which his hair covered when he was grown a boy; and after he came to be a man, another flash broke into his bedchambers, and burnt the arrows in a quiver that was hanging under him; from whence his diviners presaged, that archers and light-armed men should win him considerable victories in his wars; and the vulgar gave him this name, because in those many dangers by lightning he bore some resemblance to the Theban Bacchus.
We had not noticed the fact that the six bedchambers at Maubert were altogether unprovided with these luxuries, for luxuries they must be called in a region where there is absolutely nothing whatever to render them necessary. Without smoke, fog, artificial or atmospheric impurities of any kind, one might surely remain here in a condition of ideal cleanliness from January to December.
The searching daylight, the plain, matter-of-fact character of the manifestations, the absence of all solemnity and mystery, impressed me favorably towards the spiritual theory. If disembodied souls, I said, really exist and can communicate with those in the flesh, why should they choose moonlight or darkness, graveyards or lonely bedchambers, for their visitations?
After dinner she peremptorily ordered her grand-nieces into the retirement of their bedchambers, unblushingly alleging their exhausted condition in front of the perfect bloom of their beautiful young vigour.
Then one by one the sounds died away; the lights went out in the bedchambers; faint flickerings stole through the chinks of doors and windows. The watchman cried out the hour, and the gleam of a lantern flashed here and there, illuminating the open court-yard. The cocks crowed shrilly into the night air.
Therefore the family, being ousted by the march of progress from their chosen employment, took up with a general country store as being the next thing to a country tavern, the principal difference consisting in the fact that all the guests were transients, never requiring bedchambers, securing their rest on the tops of sugar and flour barrels and codfish boxes, and their refreshment from stray nibblings at the stock in trade, to the profitless deplenishment of raisins and loaf sugar and crackers and cheese.
It rustled the silken garments of the ladies, and waved the long curls of the gentlemen's wigs, and shook the window-hangings and the curtains of the bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir, which yet was more like a hush. A shadow of awe and half-fearful anticipation nobody knew wherefore, nor of what had all at once fallen over the company.
Through that chilly gallery, preceded by Barker and his wax- lights; stared upon by those grim portraits, till more than once she started as if she had seen a ghost; up narrow, steep stone stair-cases, which might lead to a prison in a tower or a dormitory in a monastery any where except to ordinary, natural bedchambers.
In the matter of bedchambers even hotelbedchambers there can be great diversity. That we were in just now was close and unwholesome, and wore an air of feverishness and disorder. Here, on the contrary, the air is fresh and brisk, for the breeze from Boston harbor slightly flavored, it is true, by its journey across the northern part of the city has been blowing into the room all night long.
These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford snug as squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of wind-played needles to sing one asleep. I little expected company, but, creeping in through a low side-door, I found five or six birds nestling among the tassels.
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