and awful silence I beheld before me—­in the nineteenth century, and in the civilized capital of France—­such a machine for secret murder by suffocation as might have existed in the worst days of the Inquisition, in the lonely inns among the Hartz Mountains, in the mysterious tribunals of Westphalia!  Still, as I looked on it, I could not move, I could hardly breathe, but I began to recover the power of thinking, and in a moment I discovered the murderous conspiracy framed against me in all its horror.

My cup of coffee had been drugged, and drugged too strongly.  I had been saved from being smothered by having taken an overdose of some narcotic.  How I had chafed and fretted at the fever fit which had preserved my life by keeping me awake!  How recklessly I had confided myself to the two wretches who had led me into this room, determined, for the sake of my winnings, to kill me in my sleep by the surest and most horrible contrivance for secretly accomplishing my destruction!  How many men, winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to sleep, in that bed, and had never been seen or heard of more!  I shuddered at the bare idea of it.

But, ere long, all thought was again suspended by the sight of the murderous canopy moving once more.  After it had remained on the bed—­as nearly as I could guess—­about ten minutes, it began to move up again.  The villains who worked it from above evidently believed that their purpose was now accomplished.  Slowly and silently, as it had descended, that horrible bed-top rose towards its former place.  When it reached the upper extremities of the four posts, it reached the ceiling, too.  Neither hole nor screw could be seen; the bed became in appearance an ordinary bed again—­the canopy an ordinary canopy—­even to the most suspicious eyes.

Now, for the first time, I was able to move—­to rise from my knees—­to dress myself in my upper clothing—­and to consider of how I should escape.  If I betrayed by the smallest noise that the attempt to suffocate me had failed, I was certain to be murdered.  Had I made any noise already?  I listened intently, looking towards the door.

No! no footsteps in the passage outside—­no sound of a tread, light or heavy, in the room above—­absolute silence everywhere.  Besides locking and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which I had found under the bed.  To remove this chest (my blood ran cold as I thought of what its contents might be!) without making some disturbance was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through the house, now barred up for the night, was sheer insanity.  Only one chance was left me—­the window.  I stole to it on tiptoe.